I’m tryna get high ‘til I can’t feel nothin’
I could fall out the sky and I still won’t feel nothin’
I’m way too high (yeah, what?) Whoa (high) whoa (yeah)
I’m way too high (yeah, what?) Whoa, whoa (yeah)
That’s the song, “Sky” by Playboi Carti, that my son was rapping for me in the car the other day. Actually, when I say “rapping,” I should really say he was “incoherently and forcefully mumbling.”
And this is what it actually sounded like: “Muh huh huh huuhhhh huh huh huuhhh huhhh huh. Muh huh huh huuhhhh huh huh huuhhh huhhh huh.”
You can insert your own “that’s what all rap sounds like” joke here if you want. I would never, you old crank.
Anyway, why did my son sound like that? The lyrics of that song give a clue. He was, in fact, “in the sky,” in a way. And his mouth was frozen and stuffed full of gauze and he was dribbling spit and blood all over himself. A classic Friday at the Prest household!
Just kidding. This was out of the ordinary for sure – my son had gone through that rite of passage that so many of us remember, getting his wisdom teeth removed.
Do you remember when yours came out? Sure you do – as I’ve spoken to people about the experience I had with my kid, I’ve learned that the whole world of wisdom teeth has created vivid memories for many, many people, and they all have wild stories to tell.
I recall a few bits of my own surgery, now more than 20 years ago, including the odd sensation of being instructed to count to 10 as the anesthesiologist was knocking me out.
“Haha, OK. One, two, thr.”
I still remember the tingling running up my arm as the sedative drifted towards my heart, sending me to the shadow land. I then remember waking up and “hitting on” the nurses. I’m sure they loved hearing those sexy mumbles from a drugged out bloody young man. So charming!
Another friend told me about his post-op adventure of jumping off a bus in the middle of traffic and then sprinting home the last 10 blocks, making it all the way there before falling on his face on his stairs, waking up hours later in a giant pool of blood. So much wisdom! I’m thinking I might know why the instructions they give you now say that public transit is NOT RECOMMENDED.
And then there are the poor souls who just get local anesthetic and are awake for the whole procedure. They’re the ones who come out with tales of dentists swearing, sweating, blasting, sawing, hacking, getting out the crowbar and standing on top of the chair to get the needed leverage. Imagine enduring all that and then getting sent home without any of the drugged-out bliss? Where’s the wisdom in that?
Now that I’m a dad, I’ve learned that wisdom teeth wackiness is not just a formative memory for the young patient, but also for the parents there to witness the kid coming out of the fog. This was, I’m quite certain, the first time my son has been “impaired,” so it was the first time I’d seen him super loopy.
He was VERY happy when they brought me in to see him.
“Hi dad!” he shouted through the gauze, before yelling several more things that my wife tells me I shouldn’t put in the newspaper.
Then the nurse brought over a wheelchair, explaining that legs can be wobbly after the surgery. They use the wheelchair to get patients out of the building, through the parking lot and into their cars safely, she explained. This is when my son decided it was a good idea to hop out of the chair and start jumping up and down, to show how un-wobbly his legs were. I’ll consider us lucky that he didn’t crash into the X-ray machine. The nurses eventually wobbled him down into the wheelchair and off we went.
I learned a lot that day. I learned that he can actually jump a tiny bit on wobbly legs, and he’s a great gauze rapper, and he is pretty chill about being in pain, and he’s not a fan of looking like a chipmunk, and he’s decent at Fortnite even when sedated.
Of course, the risk of a young person getting too attached to the painkillers is certainly a concern, and some corners of the medical world argue there’s no evidence that even impacted wisdom teeth need to be removed if they aren’t causing problems.
But it’s all over for my kid now – he got all four out – and we had a good time, learned a bit about ourselves, and sang a few bars of some pretty good songs.
Wise guys? “Muh huh huh huuhhhhh.”
Andy Prest is the editor of the North Shore News. His humour/lifestyle column runs biweekly.
