Extraction

I often wonder why we are born with things like an appendix, wisdom teeth, foreskin, moles and gallbladders if all that ends up happening is that we get 'em yanked, snipped, and cut out.

Or maybe these lovely little items are indeed planted in our vessels for a purpose of some sort, to serve a greater good?

I have my wisdom teeth, but holy sweet mother of Farley, they're huuuuuge. If God wanted me to masticate spinach and alfalfa all bloody day long, he certainly gave me the tools. It takes me forty-five minutes to brush those beasts. My parents, because they care about whether or not I would fit into society, footed my orthodontic bill when I was a tween because a) I looked like Nancy Kerrigan that got the baseball bat in the face, not the shins and b) I realllllly wanted braces, or so I thought. I had braces for a solid 800 years. At one point I had my 12 year-old molars removed to make room for my wisdom teeth. Lucky me. I swear my wisdom teeth each have 7 corners.

We are all born with (or develop very early on) stuff that seemingly has no purpose. Maybe we have a gargantuan amount of pride, or obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Or maybe we are overly sensitive, crumpling under the smallest pressures. What are we supposed to do with these characteristics? Do we always have to yank them?

I'd like to think not, but maybe that's just the hippie in me. I think pride creates hard workers. I think obsessive-compulsive tendencies give birth to people who are goal-orientated and driven. And I think we need overly sensitive people to balance out the asshole factors of the prideful and obsessive-compulsive people.

What do we end up with? Balance. Our lives become surrounded with people of all types, from all walks of life, each giving a piece of themselves for the sake of life and love. Some of us are gay, some of us have our gallbladders. Some of us are vegans who cradle the wounded (vagans always cradle the wounded!) and some of us are meat-eating conquerors, but we all deserve to wear our crowns. There is no need to take them away, if we can use our teeth for wisdom.