Yesterday was the last day with my last baby tooth. This morning, my dentist pulled it.

Getting a tooth pulled is a crazy, weird, anxious and scary experience. Probably one of the most weird occurrences that I can remember in my 35 years. You hear that?! I had a baby tooth for THIRTY-FIVE YEARS. Almost 36, but who’s counting anymore. Around 10 years ago, I lost another of my baby teeth as an adult. And it was equally as terrible of an experience, requiring oral surgery to remove twisty, curved roots that had broken off from the crown and stayed put. This last baby tooth was pulled to make way for the adult tooth that finally made its appearance known by breaking through the gum line (and not pushing the other tooth out of the way, naturally). That former baby tooth had a cavity when I was little; has been broken and filled twice in my adulthood (once, eating pizza for lunch at my part-time coffee shop job; the second, eating Skyline Chili in Cincinnati with a former boyfriend — both incidents reminding me of two very distinct places in my life).

I’m feeling oddly reflective about losing the last part of my youth. Seems silly to think about a deciduous tooth in that regard, no? It was a resilient bugger (proven by the seemingly difficult manner in removing it), but it was a problem tooth too. Decay had once again found its way into the tight spaces between it and its neighbor. If that’s all not a metaphor for lost youth, I don’t know what it.

In my future: the possibility of adult braces. Which… meh.

Maybe I’m not such a grown-up after all.