Welp, the title just about sums it up. There I was, a couple of casual post-board meeting drinks- with-colleagues deep, perched up on my hotel bathroom counter about 3 inches from the mirror, aggressively flossing. I should have known that something an oral disaster would befall me after I went to bed against my better judgment the night before without flossing after a kale and pulled chicken-filled dinner. On my 3rd try to get my floss all up in my two top right back molars, after internally monologuing something along the lines of “huh. It’s so hard to get my floss up in here, I must have a bunch of weird food stuck in there…” I caught the motherlode and was all psyched. Except instead of pulling out at bunch of taco meat (sorry but if you honestly clicked on a post called “The Time I Flossed and My Tooth Came Out” and you expected some kind of clean and non-offensive story, then buzz off) I pulled out an entire section of my god damned tooth. I actually spit it out with what I would qualify as a high-to-tremendously-high amount of calm grace, and there in my shaking hand was a creepy jagged piece of molar tooth. Essentially the human body’s interpretation of the Aggro Crag. In my fucking hand. Because random pieces of your tooth crumbling out of your mouth when you are not in a horrible stress dream where you are in college and forgot to go to all of your classes all semester and also don’t have pants on is totally normal and you should probably expect it whilst practicing your regular routine of disciplined oral hygiene. And now there is a cavern of nothingness hanging out like an amusement park for my tongue in between #14 and #15.
I have nothing else to say on the topic until I go to the dentist and see what the cavity-riddled damage is, except that I kept the weird broken tooth piece and brought it back home to Denver in a secured pocket of my floral cosmetics bag. I’m actively considering adding it to my Shell Art mug filled with sand and shells from different places I have visited but it’s a big decision and I haven’t quite made up my mind yet. For now I’ll continue to occasionally reach into my makeup bag and fish for the tooth piece and then look at it with a mix of wonder and horror.