Until recently you could’ve driven a Lamborghini through the space between my two front teeth. The braces are off now, though, and the gap is gone.

By design, the whole process left two cavernous openings elsewhere along my top row of choppers. The plan was to plug those gaps too. Let’s sing it together: “All I want for Christmas is my two fake teeth . . .”

Last week the reconstruction effort began. With an evil grin my dentist, Dr. Pain, as I shall call him, wielded a syringe bearing an uncanny resemblance to your average weapon of mass destruction, or at least what I envision one of those elusive entities to look like.

“OK, let’s give it a shot.” I hate it when dentists think they have the gift of stand-up comedy.

As I opened wide, my beloved dentist inserted the needle (many times over, I might add) into the roof of my mouth. This was in an effort to numb any pain I might otherwise experience. Let me tell you, the syringe could’ve been empty, and any pain I felt later still would have paled in comparison to the pitchforklike pokes I was currently enduring.

The Drill of Death came next, right up into my jawbone. “Man, this thing is smooth!” Dr. Pain commented regarding his newly acquired tool. Easy for him to say. I would’ve offered to let him experience it firsthand, but I couldn’t talk with my mouth full of torture devices.

Wiping away my shed blood, he began screwing the first of two metal tooth receptacles into my jawbone. This should prove interesting at airport security: “Excuse me, sir, but you’ll need to remove your jaw. There seems to be something in there.”

For several days after my ordeal I popped Tylenols at about the same rate many seventh graders toss M&Ms down the hatch.

It won’t always be this way, of course. In heaven “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4).

Sounds good. In the meantime, does anybody have a Tylenol?