Last week, I went to the dentist, and he suggested that instead of living through a lot more not-necessarily-successful dental work on two dodgy back molars, I “proactively” decide to pull the suckers and get implants.

I will admit, I was kind of freaked out by the idea of it — both the thought of undergoing the removal, and the thought of walking around for the rest of my life with prosthetic teeth. Then, after about half an hour, I calmed down enough to realize that I was having this freakout while wearing glasses on my eyes, an iPod around my neck with its earphones in my ears, a partial denture in my mouth, a brace on my right wrist, and my cellphone in my pocket, where I could be certain to feel it if it rang. I am already living my life with a whole mess of detachable artificial parts I either can’t or wouldn’t want to do without*: adding a few that would at least consistently be where I left them would be a nice change of pace.

* allow me to add to this list my work notebooks, which are my outboard brain in the office. I briefly misplaced the current one and was twitchy for hours till I found it.