Perhaps I Should Have Asked For a Water Pick

Today is my birthday, but as we all know, today was also the birthday of both President Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, particularly Mr. Darwin since his seminal work was published 150 years ago. I will take a moment to plug an interesting site related to Darwin's work, and that is all I will say about this. As usual, they are all you will hear about, while my birthday will once again be ignored by the media. Pity.



Instead I'm going to talk about a ridiculous thing that happened to me this morning. I try to take care of myself, and that includes a full regiment of dental hygiene. I've always brushed, but I take it more seriously these days. I actually remember having a conversation with my father where he declared that he didn't remember the last time he brushed his teeth (apparently, whiskey kills the germs that cause bad breath - good to know), so it's not something that was pushed on me heavily as a youth.

Anyway, as part of my morning regiment, I floss. Not big thing. The issue is that I had a cavity filled a couple of months ago, and ever since, I can't properly get the floss between my two top teeth in back consistently. As a result, this morning, while attempting once again to wedge the floss in there, the floss broke, leaving a two inch piece of floss lodged firmly between the teeth. Again, I had something stuck in my teeth, and that something was dental floss.

For the life of me, I didn't know what to do.

I tried to grab it to pull it out, but wet floss is decidedly hard to grip. I tried grabbing it with a pair of tweezers, but failed miserably at that too. I seriously considered grabbing a pair of pliers, but decided that the risk of a kid walking in on me while I had a pair of pliers in my mouth might be setting a bad example. I attempted to try and send a second piece of floss in after it, a sort of rescue mission, but all other flosses died in any attempt to get in there.

Finally, I found one of those floss pick things that I ordinarily eschew for the traditional floss. I put the floss part between the teeth and bit down on it, successfully jamming it between the teeth. Then I tried to yank it out, "tried" being the key word in that sentence. So now I had a two inch length of dental floss and a green floss pick stuck between my teeth. This was not my most dignified moment.

Finally, after a yank of ridiculous proportions (I was seriously considering that I was going to spend my birthday at the dentist having yanked something out of place), I managed to dislodge both of the offending implements and move on with my day. I was just amazed at the chaos that could be cause by such a tiny thing. A seemingly innocent piece of waxed string nearly derailed my entire day.

On a side note, a similar incident is the reason that to this day I refuse to wear thongs anymore, but we can talk about that another time.