The two parts to my essay are (a) physical pain and (b) Welstschmerz.
(a) Back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, I was having trouble with my four wisdom teeth. The wisdom tooth pressing up against its neighboring tooth caused extreme pain. The first wisdom tooth extraction (Upper right) went rather well. A dentist got it out. The second wisdom tooth (lower right) was more complicated so I had to go to Flushing Hospital.
The wisdom tooth resisted being extracted by the dental surgeon’s first attempt, and he used a reasonably sized pliers. But as the wisdom tooth resisted, the pain increased dramatically, and the dental surgeon kept choosing larger and larger pliers. The last pair of pliers was quite enormous and resembled a medieval torture instrument. For about a week after that, I just stayed drunk, and I rinsed my mouth with whisky which is not only a good antiseptic, it helped deaden the pain.
A month or two after that, my two left wisdom teeth were pressing up against their neighboring teeth. The pain was excruciating. So I chose an oral surgeon or rather an oral surgery team.
I lay down on a gurney, they gave me phenobarbital, and I went into a semi-dream state, but I was still awake, and I was aware of the surgeon and the three or four nurses assisting him who were hovering over me. They extracted both wisdom teeth with surgery rather than yanking them out with pliers. Everything went smoothly, I felt no pain, and the subsequent recuperation period had some pain but it was minimal.
So, if you need to have more than one tooth extracted at a time, choose oral surgery. Phenobarbital was wonderful. You get anesthetized, but your body does not feel threatened as with ether or other anesthesias. And you are still actually awake.
(b) The other type of pain I have experienced is Weltschmerz or “World pain,” defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “sentimental pessimism or melancholy over the state of the world”:
(1) JFK got assassinated. That trauma was painful, but we discussed that already.
(2) The twin towers came down on 9/11/2001. But of course we already discussed that trauma as well.
(3) President Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia on May 8, 1970. I remember the protests in this country were swift and enormous. I tried to go to a protest demonstration in Washington, D. C., but there were just too many protesters. Our bus had to stop somewhere in the outskirts of Washington, D. C., so we just sat there; some of the passengers had guitars so we made the best of it by singing peace songs and Beatles’ songs. It was fun. But the invasion itself was traumatic and caused a lot of people Weltschmerz.
(4) January 30, 1968 was the date of the Tet Offensive. That was when we realized that, actually the Communists whooped us. On April 30, 1975, the U. S. withdrew from Vietnam. Pictures of the “fall” of Saigon were quite traumatic. I felt more Weltschmerz.
(5) The death of our two friends, Steve and Randy.
On a less serious note, the French language has two interesting tongue twisters, that is le vire-langue (rarely used):
(a) Ton thé, t’ôte-t-il ta toux? Does your tea get rid of your cough?
(b) La reine Didon dîna, dit-on, d’un dos dodu d’un dodu dindon. The Queen of Carthage dined, they say, on the fat back of a fat turkey.
Of course, Dido (Didon) was not actually a queen, she was a princess, though she did run ancient Carthage.
©14 September 2017
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