Can We Get Back to the Surgery?

ALBANY, N.Y. - After my dentist proclaimed my mouth cavity-free, I had to the courage to ask a question I'd been curious about for months: Do I need to get my wisdom teeth removed?

"I don't know," he said, and looked at me blankly. "Go see these people." He handed me a business card for the Adirondack Oral/Maxillofacial Group.

Three weeks and one canceled appointment later, I turned off an office park cul-de-sac and parked at the oral surgeon's lot. The practice shared an operation with a deli, which I walked into by mistake before rounding the building and finding into the right office.

A woman with a fixed cleft pallet and still evident lisp took an X-ray, and then took me into a small examination room. Five minutes later the doctor walked in, dressed in scrubs and still wearing a face mask. This was 8:30 in the morning. Unless this doctor performs dawn surgeries, he's so much of a germophobe he wears these as a matter of course.

The doctor used my EMS approach to making his job more interesting: changing the subject. He took a print of the X-ray, put it front of a light, and then asked a question.

"So, what do you do with your life?"

I told him that I'm leaving in a few weeks for language school in Beijing.

"Cool," he said, a bit informally for a doctor but he was under 40. "I have a cousin who spent a year in Beijing. He met a Chinese girl and they married."

"So, what dialect do you plan on studying?"

Mandarin, I said. No one studies anything but Mandarin. I didn't say that part.

"That's like the main dialect, right? The Communists forced everyone to speak that after they took over?"

Well, no. I could have told the dentist that standard Mandarin is derived from a standard Beijing accent and the language of the Imperial Court. The Communist government has been more effective in promoting a centuries-old policy that people should learn Mandarin. Chinese isn't unique in having so many dialects. Lots of languages have dialects.

I didn't really want to get into it. I wanted to know if I needed oral surgery in the next two weeks. Would I be setting off on my journey east with a bleeding mouth?

Thankfully, the removal of my wisdom tooth (I've only got one) can wait. The impacted tooth is asymptomatic, and besides, if it became infected, the dentist suggested I could get it removed in China.

"They've got excellent dental care there. We've had some of their dentists come over and speak to us. Where are you going to be studying?"

Amazing. It was all-China, all-the-time with this guy. He went on about studying Chinese was a smart career move, problems I might have with learning the language, and the experience of having a Chinese cousin-in-law.

The dentist is a good example of a group of people I run-into from time to time: the China Crazies. They've got a lot to say about China, and they don't get to talk about it very often. When they hear I'm going there, the floodgates open. It's very flattering that they want to talk my destination, but sometimes inappropriate. Let's save the China chit-chat until after surgery.