Tangled Tuesday - Dental Floss, Wands, and the Tooth Fairy

Photo courtesy of Enokson via Flickr

I've been lucky to have good teeth. I'll be 51 this July and yet to suffer a cavity. Part of that is due to growing up with a mom who was a dental assistant. Mom was diligent about dental health. She used to tell me the Tooth Fairy only traded coins for baby teeth with no cavities. I was unsure what the Tooth Fairy did with cavity-filled baby teeth. Maybe she smacked the poor child on the head with her wand. Maybe she took a selfie with the poor, dead tooth, and then flew off laughing. Regardless, I lived in mortal fear that the Tooth Fairy would pass me over.

Anyways, back to the present. My dentist loves that I brush after every meal. But I have a confession--I hate dental floss. I don't hate flossing, I floss every day. I hate the way the little plastic floss dispensers are designed.

You know when you're trying to break off a piece by using that stupid little metal cutter? It never breaks off nicely like it's supposed to, it shreds. So, you pull out a little more floss, hoping to get a clean cut. And it shreds again. So you pull out a little more...and a little more. Until you end up with literally yards of the stuff in the sink. Congratulations! You've wasted six whole dollars, and have nothing but an empty plastic container to show for it. Technically, you could set the floss aside, and cut off pieces with a pair of scissors. But that's not the way it's supposed to work. The floss is designed to snap off by using the little metal cutter. Using scissors would be admitting defeat. In a rage, you throw the plastic container (and the spent floss) into the garbage. Forget the floss, who needs it? Dental health is over-rated. The Tooth Fairy already has all your baby teeth, doing god-knows-what with them.

Curse you, floss--and the little plastic dispenser you came in. I should ditch dispenser floss and buy the wands. But I won't. Wands are for Tooth Fairies--and she's the one who got me into trouble in the first place.