I celebrated the weekend before my birthday by going to Afropunk Brooklyn 2018, the annual music festival. It featured Janelle Monae and Erykah Badu with special guest Angela Davis.

My actual birthday was spent sitting in the dentist’s chair for long overdue surgery. Although this confused the dentist, I figured taking care of business was a great way to spend the day. Besides, the days of balloons and pin the tail on the donkey are long over.

Before sitting in the chair, I was presented with 3 choices. 1.) I picked a local anesthetic over getting the gas. 2.) Santana’s Greatest Hits was the theme music, chosen from his vast collection of CDs. They offered to hook up music from my phone, but I didn’t want to shock or offend the people drilling in my mouth. He liked the choice because he saw them live in the 70s. 3.) I declined the teddy bear at first because I am a grown ass man. It did come in handy as something to squeeze when he injected me 3 times with numb numb juice. There are no pics of me holding it during the procedure. Sorry.