I love my teeth

My best piece of advice for the day:

Never Google Image anything related to teeth.

I just saw some of the most disturbing pictures I have EVER seen. Tooth decay, snaggle teeth, cracked teeth, cavities, missing teeth, screws drilled into people's jaws instead of teeth...it was HORRIFYING.

Blood doesn't bother me. Bruises, scrapes, broken bones. Needles don't bother me. I'm practically addicted to donating blood every 56 days (and you all should be too)! Very little grosses me out or causes me pain. But anything that might harm my teeth...is very scary. I love my teeth very much. I obsess over oral hygiene. The shocking thing is, I don't floss. Ever. I refuse to floss, but I brush my teeth and gargle Listerine every time I leave the house. One of my greatest fears is chipping a tooth. Or falling and smashing them on the concrete! I shudder just thinking about it!! And I have these dreams...apparently it's pretty common, but I have had innumerable dreams about my teeth falling out. They just crumble in my mouth, and I spit them out in a bloody mess. It gives me this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach until I wake up and realize I still have all my teeth, at which point I can't stop touching them or thanking God that they're really there. I have to check every once in a while. I don't know what the dreams mean though. I've heard several explanations...everything from "it means you have problems with your parents" to "you're afraid of getting old and dying" to "you're experiencing some type of loss of control in your life" to "you're worried about what people think of you" to "I think it means something bad about your relationship with God or something...that's what it meant for my friend".

I may never figure out what the dreams mean, but I do know one thing. When I'm a kindergarten teacher, I'm really going to stress oral hygiene. Every day, we'll have a unit on why you should brush your teeth. Constantly. Maybe I will show them those nasty pictures. That's right, I'll employ scare tactics on 6 year olds. They're gonna get it eventually in sex ed in high school.

If you have unprotected sex, you WILL get gonorrhea.

Oh yeah? Well...

If you don't brush your teeth and gargle mouthwash 5 times a day, your teeth WILL look like this:

Bleh, I can't believe I just put that up there! I'm only doing it for the kids.

That's right little guy. Keep yourself safe. Okay, even more important than the advice about Google: TAKE CARE OF YOUR TEETH!