Boredom is a cause for many actions. To escape it, mankind has invented many distractions and even some products which have benefited humanity. It is said that entertainment is not practiced in the animal kingdom.

Only man must have his television set with 250 channels so that he can choose one and complain about it. Only man must have his nightly or weekly dose of sports to prevent him from yawning and going to bed at 8 p.m. Toys of all complexities are used as a distraction against ennui.

Let me relate a tale of boredom that I would never have believed if I was not an integral part of it. It happened in Korea in the year 1959 at Yongsan, an army base in Seoul.

I was a first lieutenant (one silver bar), recently graduated from dental school and also recently sent to man the Captain Marvin Carius Dental Clinic. The clinic was named for a dentist who was killed in the Korean War. The facilities were excellent and we had all the most recent dental instruments.

I arrived with a new group of about six other dentists from all over the United States. Not long after our arrival we found that life became rather repetitious. We would leave our Quonset huts, eat at the officers mess hall, perform our dentistry at the clinic, return to the mess hall for supper and then play shuffleboard into the evening, while drinking Heineken beer at 10 cents a bottle. Life had settled into a dull routine on the other side of the globe. Occasionally an argument at the shuffleboard table was mildly exciting.

One of my dentist companions who was from Long Island did not respond terribly well to boredom. He was always posing unanswerable conundrums and frequently getting involved in some very unmilitary practices. One of his questions in the mess hall was Úquot;Should Gary Powers have taken the poison pill when his U-2 plane was knocked out of the sky over Russia?Úquot; Dr. A. (I will call him) said no contact could or should cause a person to commit suicide.

The regular army majors and colonels said it was his duty. He took the money so he was obligated to complete the contract. If he was dead the Russians could not have proven we were spying on them. Actually they used the Powers' capture to cancel a peace meeting between President Eisenhower and pPremier Khrushchev.

And now the tale of boredom!

A group of dentists were sitting in the coffee room of the clinic when Dr. A. announced, Úquot;I bet you I can extract my own wisdom tooth myself without any help.Úquot;

Úquot;It's a bet!Úquot; screamed another dentist. Úquot;How much do you want to wager?Úquot; The clinic flew into a maelstrom of activity. Everyone was betting for and against. Even the enlisted men got in on the action. Before long $200 was collected and the action began. (In 1959 $200 was a large sum of money.)

Someone would inject Dr. A. and Dr. A. would have 45 minutes to accomplish the task of removing his lower right third molar. The air was electric as Dr. A. took the forceps to his own mouth in front of a mirror.

I was watching him from about 25-feet away as he tugged to and fro, buccal and lingual. I will never forget that picture out of my head. It was both brutal and comic together.

After about 15 minutes, Dr. A. screamed Úquot;I've got it!Úquot; He held the bloody molar high over his head. He had done it; or had he? Upon closer examination, the doubting bettors saw that a root tip had fractured. Dr. A's shoulders dropped with disappointment. He had lost the bet and the clinic's oral surgeon would have to extract the missing root tip. A valiant try but no cigar.

Dr. A. did not do it for the money. He did it as a method of fighting the everyday routines and the boredom that enveloped us.

Dr. A. is still one of my closest friends and we still laugh when we talk of Korea, boredom and wisdom teeth.