#1 Remember to Floss
Apr 9th, 2008 by doing better
I don’t enjoy it either. I would rather go straight to bed. What IS that stuff on the floss? All I know is that it must be full of nasty bacteria. Did you know that some people don’t wash their hands after they floss? They have that nasty bacterial gunk all over their fingers, and they go to bed without washing it off! Once in bed, they may become intimate with their partners and spread the nasty bacterial gunk to another person. Where has your partner put his or her fingers and possibly spread his or her bacterial tooth butter?
In the Gulag, as I have read in prisoner memoirs, some inmates were so desperate to get out of their Siberian hard labor (mining, logging, digging in permafrost) that they would run a thread between their teeth, capturing the nasty tooth gunk, and use that thread to infect a wound on an arm or foot. This unhygienic practice resulted in an infected, gangrenous limb which had to be amputated. The amputee would then be excused from hard labor, although he would be punished for sabotaging government property (himself).
Sometimes my brother gets annoyed at me because (he says) I talk about disgusting things too much, but there are so many disgusting things all around us. Even in our own mouths. (Isn’t it funny how we are so fastidious about keeping disgusting things out of our mouths? A futile endeavor, as anyone who has ever woken up in the morning will attest.) I don’t like to think about my bodily processes too much. I don’t like to think about bellybuttons and eyeballs. What would happen if I untied my bellybutton? Would I come undone? I don’t want to know.
For those in search of smugness, flossing is a sure bet. Social conversation rarely turns to flossing (most people are eager to avoid the topic, aware of how far short they fall of the ideal practice), but if you can ever boldly answer a prying question with, “Yes, I floss twice a day, every day, rain or shine,” that will shut the critics up for a while, and you will be the undisputed queen of the smug.