Floss . . . Never Leave Home Without It

Chances are, if you have teeth in your head, you are going to need to floss during a really inconvenient time. You may come to regret the rash decisions you feel necessary to get the job done. Such was the night of a very public Christmas party in a local restaurant’s banquet room.

It was a dress-up affair and the guests were from every walk of life. We were eating usual banquet fare: baked chicken, steamed broccoli, fried apples, salad. When a piece of broccoli became lodged in the center of my bottom teeth, I very calmly and discreetly tried to unhinge it by using my tongue of steel, as a pry bar. My attempts were unsuccessful. I used another equally secretive method: the mouth vacuum. I figured this would work because Dyson has nothing on the sucking action generated by the phenomenal human orifice.  No one was any the wiser as I tried again and again to siphon the broccoli from its hiding place. 

I checked my purse for floss. I asked my sister for floss. I didn’t know any of the other women there well enough to ask them for floss. Half an hour later, when using the above two techniques failed, I finessely added a third, by prodding a fingernail into the tight little crevice. It still didn’t budge. Maybe the remnant of the green side dish couldn’t be seen by the untrained eye. I checked the bathroom mirror. Nope, there it was, smack in the middle of my lower teeth.

I had an ah ha moment, and went for the old strand of hair trick. I delicately placed a thread of my own hair between my teeth. Yikes, it wasn’t strong enough. That broccoli wasn’t moving, and now there was a piece of brown hair lodged on top of it, looking like a piece of Spanish moss hanging from a Live Oak.

I finally went back to the party to find everyone dancing. The food had been removed, which added to my agitation because I was still hungry. Two bites of broccoli did not make a complete meal. And then, suddenly, I spied the solution to my problem. My unsuspecting husband thought I was tenderly caressing his derriere and turned and smiled at me, as I lifted the most perfect specimen of floss from his back pocket. Okay, ripped is the more appropriate verb, but he still didn’t know what the heck I was doing when I snatched the thread hanging from his black jeans. (Yes, it was a dress-up affair–hence his black jeans rather than blue jeans). I quickly took my treasure back to the bathroom.

Looking into the mirror, I carefully placed the precious thread between my two lower front teeth. It was a very tight fit. As I attempted to pull it through the gap, the darn thread broke. From both ends. The thread was too short and too wet to grab hold of, and it was keeping the broccoli more snuggly in place. Good grief. The black rope now stuck in my mouth was much more obvious than the green vegetable topped with brown hair.  It was beginning to look like a club sandwich.  This was getting serious. I needed back up. Since my sister was also at the event, I went out, lips tightly clinched, found her, and guided her toward the bathroom. I didn’t have to say a word. I just flashed my toothiest grin, and she started howling. I tried to tell her everything, between laughter and gulps of air, but all we could do was bend over and hold our stomachs. Good thing the music was so loud.

We remembered there was a dentist at the party and we argued, giggling, about which of us should go get him. He was the dentist of neither of us–we didn’t even know him. Would he make a women’s bathroom call? Clarity finally overtook us, and we saw the truly ludicrous situation before us.

What does one do? Say, “Excuse me, but my sister is in the bathroom with a decomposing stalk of hairy broccoli wedged between her teeth and a piece of black cotton rope is finishing off the top of her compost heap. . . and we thought, with you being a dentist and all. . .”

With our shrieks bouncing off the four bathroom walls, a cocktail server came in. She readily joined our dilemma and promised to go off to the kitchen to see if anyone there had floss. We waited.

The best she could do was bring back one of those little red plastic swords maraschino cherries and olives are speared with before they are dunked into a drink. I didn’t think twice when she placed it from her hand into mine–did not think about how many hands it had touched before it reached my mouth–what was the point? I had already used a piece of hair from my head and a string from the seat of my husband’s pants. Instead, I  gratefully, gleefully, grabbed the thing and speared enough of the homemade club sandwich to return to the dispersing party guests, pick up my coat, and leave.

I heard I missed a great party, but they missed quite a night, too. My husband predictably smiled and shook his head when I relayed the story to him as he drove me through Hardee’s drive-thru. Since then, I have planted containers of floss in my purse, desk, car, bathroom, bedroom . . . dental floss . . . NEVER leave home without it.