I don’t think he means canker sores. I get those as well as what he’s talking about, and they definitely seem to be different things to me.
Not… it is definately NOT a canker sore/cold sore… thos i get on my lips, or insdie my mouth. This is exactly as I said it was. One little taste bud going crazy on my tounge… it’s not big (It’s the size of one taste bud), and it’s never more than one. I will try the Hydrogen peroxide nexrt time (As tthis one has self-destructed…
interesting stuff, though… I love the wealth of info I gain whenever I ask here 
How funny - I call them the same thing “suicidal taste buds”, and I hate them with a passion. And I can’t leave them alone. When I was a kid, and lost a tooth, invariably my tongue had to go to the spot where the tooth had been*. Now, with suicidal taste buds, I can’t stop myself from dragging the offending bud over my teeth, because, sure, the pain isn’t bad enough as it is.
A worse pain was inflicted by a serious tongue burn garnered while eating a frozen dinner. It was a cheesy enchilada type deal, and I was starving. Heated it up, took a bite, and realized too late that it was way too hot. Melted cheese is like edible napalm - it just stuck to my tongue while I did some rather ungraceful things trying to get the crap off. Before long, the roof of my mouth and the back of my tongue revolted, and I had to sleep sitting in the recliner for two nights because lying down caused the rather inconvenient problem of not being able to breathe.
*When I was a kid, I read somewhere (probably my first urban legend) that if you didn’t stick your tongue in the spot where your tooth was, a gold tooth would grow in. I never successfully lasted long enough to find out, so who knows, maybe it’s true. 
I get those as well. They get the nail clipper treatment.
I call them Taste Bloomers (get it? It was a bud until it bloomed into a full blown flower)
Ok, that’s not true. I call them bastards
I get them too. At the first sign of them, I scrape them off with my fingernail. It’s a moment of :eek:, then it’s gone.
Hmm… okay… now that everyone has shared that they, too, have this, I’m back to the Straight Dope purpose of WHY? I now need sonme science behind this. Dark came close, but he’s not speaking of my condition…
C’mon TM’s, Don’t lemme down!
Tsk tsk. 26 posts in and nobody’s pointed out that the bumps aren’t actually the taste buds? The bumps are papillae, and they contain taste buds which are too small to actually see.
Well, I’ve always been told the bump is an infected papilla (or, informally Jenaroph, infected “taste bud”. As Peter Falk said in The Princess Bride, “Yes, you’re very smart.”). This jibes with cornflakes’, Jeep’s Phoenix’, and Frumpy Jones testimony that peroxide handles them, which I’ll have to try myself next time.
So wierd that I run across this today. I woke up with one of those little bastards committing suicide this morning. I’m gonna go try the peroxide right now!! 
Like I said- those are likely just a bud/papillae (good word, Jenaroph )which has turned into a little ulcer, aka a Canker sore. Don’t get a canker sore (nearly always on the inside of your mouth, and hurts like the devil) confused with a cold sore which is nearly always on the outside and doesn’t have a lot of pain (itches, tingling). Cold sores are actually Herpes blisters.
If you burn/cut out the little ulcer- you’ll “cure” it- altho sometimes the wound will become a new one. Yep, you can sometimes do it with H2O2, and without too much danger (your Doc will likely want Liquid Nitrogen). And they take a long time to heal on their own, right?
Acidolpholus and vit C will bring them to heel in a few days.
Well, “canker sores” I’ve had are almost always on the inside of my cheek and feel more spread out and smoothly bumpy than these things on my tongue which are concentrated on one little point. The pain is also different: canker sores are very sensitive to acidity and somewhat sensitive to temperature. These things are only sensitive to pressure. I’m not saying that this isn’t a canker sore (IANAD), but that it just behaves so differently I’m a little skeptical without a cite, preferably with pictures of each to make sure we’re all on the same page.
[nitpick]“Papillae” is the plural of “papilla”, not a singular term.[/nitpick]
Anyhow, on a tangent about the papilla/taste bud confoundation, I don’t think I’ve ever had one of these things near the center of my tongue on a fungiform papilla. IIRC, that’s where the actual taste buds are, meaning that this can’t be an inflamed taste bud (and incidentally, revtim, we can’t be destroying our sense of taste by snipping at them).
I get these too. They’re usually whitish in colour and they are not what I know to be a canker.
I’m surprised at all the people who forcibly remove them. They only hurt for like a day and then go away on their own. At least IME. And I never thought they had anything to do with taste buds.