(Note: not my teeth.)
I need to decide whether I’m going to get my wisdom teeth extracted or not. My dentist recommended it, but they aren’t causing me any pain right now, and I could theoretically live my whole life with them (just barely) although I might regret having them later on when they start to rot. And I have to get a couple fillings in them anyway if I don’t get them out. So I’m leaning toward the surgery. The nail in the coffin (so to speak) might be this very calculation:
Assuming that I floss every day (more or less true) and it takes 3 seconds to floss each wisdom tooth (they’re hard to reach back there):
• 3 seconds × 4 teeth = 12 seconds/day
• 12 × 365.25 days in the year = 4380 seconds/year
• 4380 ÷ 3600 seconds/hour = 1.2 hours/year
• 1.2 hours/year × 60 years (say I live to be 80) = 72 hours
So by getting my wisdom teeth out, I save about 72 hours of flossing time over my lifetime. According to Kyle’s account, it took him about three days to recover.
• 15 waking hours a day × 3 days = 45 hours
• 45 < 72. Thus, having the surgery saves time.
*sigh*. There’s no getting around the math of it.
