And THIS would be why I lie to the dentist…

Dental floss and I have a very uneasy relationship. If there is such a thing as a “graceful” flosser, then I would be the complete opposite, I would be the incredibly idiotic klutzy flosser. When I ask the pediatric dentist to demonstrate proper brushing and flossing techniques to my children, it’s not really because I’m some fantastic mother, it’s because I’m nearly 40 years old and trying to improve my own technique. But after last night’s fiasco, I’ve come to realize, this is not only pointless, it is possibly life threatening.

Why am I telling you this? So that one day, if JavaDad has to post a note on this blog telling you that I have died of a tooth-flossing injury, you will know it’s not some euphemism for “she’s up and snapped on us and I had to ship her off to the funny farm” — he really means it. I’m really that inept when it comes to using a tiny piece of string, apparently. Power tools and sharp knives, not a problem. Waxed strings, big problem.

So, I had a pain in the back of my mouth that let me know that I probably had something caught between my molars — a problem I run into sometimes due to the fact that I saw a really lousy dentist back when I lived in San Jose and he made one of my crowns improperly. For some reason, JavaGirl likes to remove my box of dental floss from my sink — somewhere that girl has a stockpile of them — and thus a frantic search ensued throughout the house so that I could alleviate the pain in my mouth. I should perhaps mention this was also 2am. Because, you know, this is the normal time for people to undertake such things.

After giving up on finding out where JavaGirl hid all my dental floss, I remembered that the kids had just been to the dentist and had been given those dental pics — those things that look like tiny plastic wrenches with a quarter of an inch of floss stretched across the top. That would work! I hunted one of those down and popped it in place to alleviate the issue when I suddenly realized… oh no… it is stuck. As in, it was not going to come back up and out of mouth. I now had this red plastic dental pic stuck in my mouth, and even after tugging hard, it was neither coming up, nor was the string going to break and I was frankly afraid to pull any harder or do too much wiggling because I certainly didn’t want to lose a crown. Not at 2am and not during a week so jam-packed with meetings that I don’t even have time to get my hair cut, much less see the dentist.

And that is when the maniacal laughter started.

Because when I’m stressed out and tired and in an impossible situation, that’s what I do, I start laughing.  And crying.  And then laughing harder.  And crying harder.

And then the asthmatic wheezing starts.  Because I’m laughing so hard.

But now that I had a red dental pic stuck to the far back of my mouth, this lovely display of emotion and bodily functions had an added element.

Drool.

Yes, I was laughing, crying, wheezing, and drooling.  Lots of drool.  Because when you can’t close your mouth and something is pressing down against your gums and your tongue, it causes drool.

But not just any drool, no, bloody drool.

So I’m laughing, crying, wheezing, and drooling bloody drool and my husband comes into the bathroom to see what the hell is going on with his wife at 2am. 

And finds what looks vaguely like a red fish hook in her mouth. 

I would’ve taken a picture to put on the blog.  I really would’ve.  But I didn’t have any eyeliner on. 

I realized there were three possible scenarios:  Die of an asthma attack, with the pic in my mouth.   Let my husband rip the thing and the crown out of my mouth.  Or find a pair of scissors and try to blindly stick them in my mouth and hope I could find a bit of the floss that wasn’t stuck and cut it out before I passed out from all the laughing, crying, and drooling.  (There wasn’t enough blood to pass out from.)

So of course I decided to go find a pair of scissors.

It’s a little hard to do a bit of in-mouth floss surgery on yourself when you are laughing and crying, but I did manage to snip the floss and not my tongue and free myself of the red pic. 

But if the dentist thinks I’m going to do THAT twice a day, he’s crazy!