The tooth! It's still out there! A little bit.

At the age of three and two, thirty-two, it would seem I'm still teething.

This is an outrageous face of a stairs, as one of my Dad's favourite jokes would have it. Because 32 is no age at which to be teething like. 32 I say. Jasus. What's that in dog years? Old money? Bingo numbers even?

Well past two little ducks, and looking for me droopy drawers, that's what.

What sort of a trick of nature is it that the hair on my head I'd like to hang on to is disappearing rapidly and being replaced by ardent growth in my nostrils and ears, where I'd rather it wasn't? Why am I gaining a belly despite doing all I can to stave it off and now, why am I growing teeth in a mouth where there's no place for them? Bleh!

I'm waking up nights with throbbing jaws and flushed cheeks now, and I'm only just short of roaring for my Calpol and putting gripe water on my porridge of a morning. Poor me. I'm having to liquidise my food and if this continues, I'm moving home so my Mammy can play the airplane game with the plastic spoon in an effort to stop me dying of the malnutrition.

Now, I'll admit, I was quite taken with my new tooth back when it first burst on the scene. It only popped up when I finally had an old rotten one removed and I thought I was the chosen one for some sort of anointed dental resurrection. I believed I was one of those rare, blessed people with the power to grow infinite limbs, digits and sets of teeth, no matter how many times I lost the original ones.

I tell you, I was just about to hunt down Shane McGowan and taunt him with my superpowers when the dentist told me it was actually just a belated wisdom tooth coming up, now that the dead one had been removed and there was a bit of gumtown real estate freed up in the highly prized and exclusive area known as My Gob - and we don't grow teeth for nobody else here in My Gob you know.

That was quite some time ago and I've been patiently awaiting the birth of the new tooth in the meantime, except it seems a little bit of a reluctant performer. Now, the puffiness and pain in my gums tells me it's all gone to shit back there and while one side of it is up and looking normal, the rest of it seems to have its arse cocked askance and is tilted someway that won't allow it grow properly.

So I haven't so much got a fully fledged wisdom tooth per se, I have instead a 'somewhat mature but lacks focus tooth' or 'sensible for the most part but is easily lead astray' tooth.

I should do what my Dad did and get the whole lot of them reefed out and replaced by dentures, and then I can slip them out and do impressions of the old fellas in the ads for Bonjela.

Always a silver lining.