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Sinking Your Teeth Into the New Year

New Year’s Eve. Some holidays, like American Independence Day, are celebrated by only one country. Others, like Christmas, are celebrated by many countries but not all. However, New Year’s Eve is almost universally celebrated by most, if not all, countries around the world at the same time, adjusted only for time zone differences.

That means there’s a lot of hungover people on Planet Earth on New Year’s Day. Back in the 1990s, Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum successfully battled aliens who came to invade Earth during Independence Day in a movie bearing the same name. It seems to me that if those aliens truly knew more about Earth and its customs and holidays, they might have been more successful in their invasion if they had chosen, instead, to attack on New Year’s Day when people, on a largely global scale, would have been sleeping in late and nursing the ill effects of alcohol overindulgence.

It’s an odd custom, when you come to think about it, for people to consume a disproportionately larger quantity of alcohol on that specific night over all others only to suffer the inevitable and predictable repercussions the next day. It’s almost as if people, in their hungover state, are proclaiming, “Ok, Jan 1st is starting off poorly, but the new year can only get better from here on end.”

It’s the same philosophy I follow when it comes to making early morning appointments with a dentist. I figure if you get poked, prodded and scraped in your mouth by sharp metal objects first thing in the morning, it’ll probably be the worst thing that will happen to you all day so certainly the rest of the day has to be easier from then on.

Which brings me to another thought about that movie about alien invasions-- if, instead of soldiers, the invaders had sent legions of alien dentists, they also might have been more successful in their goal of global domination. Imagine this: billions of hungover people lying in dentist chairs anesthetized with nitrous oxide or Novocain. Then all the aliens would have to do is simply step in and take over the world while we lie there with saliva aspirator hooks and cotton balls sticking out of our mouths like gagged bass and powerless to stop them. Of course, we all know that this is just a silly extrapolation by me: most people don’t have the necessary dental insurance coverage for this to happen.

Still, for those who like to party and celebrate on New Year’s Eve, I hope everyone’s evening remains safe and I will wish for a joyful, prosperous and healthy new year to you all. As for me, I’ll be waiting for my free sampler roll of dental floss and my lollipop (hopefully, minus all that alien brain sucking and anal probes).