Questions for dentists

I try not to look at my teeth too much in mirrors, but I know they’re more metal than teeth. I have a lot of cavities. Growing up I always had at least two new ones at every dentist visit. I have bad teeth.

“They’re not bad, they’re just soft.” my dentist would tell me.

“They’re not soft, they’re round.” theorized a new dentist we switched to when our health insurance changed. He had no Magic Eye books in his waiting room and was the worst.

“They’re porous teeth.”

“They’re wide, food-sized.”

“They’re sticky, plaque just clings to them.”

My dentist in college said the problem was my mouth was too small.

Dentists have been saying a lot of things to me about cavities for a long time, and I got used to it. Until I moved to Portland. All my Portland dentist ever says is “Looks great, no cavities.” It's muffled, because he doesn’t ever take off that dentist mask. He also doesn’t ever say hello or goodbye, or really do anything with that little metal scratcher besides waving it a few inches above my mouth and squinting before declaring me cavity-free. Obviously, something has changed.

Let me make this clear: the thing that has changed is not my brushing habits. Any self-respecting person with teeth would be nervous about my brushing habits. I brush twice a day, but it’s usually about ten seconds of brushing followed by a gradual disintegration into ten minutes of me sucking on my toothbrush absentmindedly while I text or make myself an omelet.

If I have impeccable dental hygiene it means someone is breaking into my apartment at night and brushing my teeth for me.

I haven’t contacted the Mars factory in Hackettstown, New Jersey, but unless they’re putting considerably smaller amounts of sugar in M&Ms in the last few years, I’m not eating any less sugar.

And I definitely can't attribute my dental health to fluoride in Portland water. We are 100% fluoride-free.

So I’m adding this cavity question to a long list of questions I can ask my landlord or a rabbi or a bus driver or Oprah or God. For now I’m just going to assume that I’m the luckiest and keep sucking on the free toothbrushes my dentist gives me. And if you’re ever looking for a dentist I recommend Portland dentists, because they prevent all cavities and you will be happy and lucky and smiling forever.

Nothing makes sense any more

Did you know men's restrooms don't have baby changing places?

That seems like a large-scale and strange enough problem that it's worth telling everyone on earth to not use public restrooms for 24 hours so they can fix it, but I guess there are millions of other oversights to fix.

Sometimes the entire world seems to me like when you and your friends want to watch a DVD and you have twenty pretty great DVDs to choose from and you use the method where every votes off one movie at a time until there's only one left and it's terrible, it's the last thing any of you would have wanted to watch and everyone looks at the case and just says "Oh no. I guess this is just the one that slipped through the cracks because no one felt strongly enough about it and now we all have to deal with it." But movies are only two hours and the world lasts an embarrassingly long time.

Some parts of the world are great though, and almost all of those parts are in the badlands.

How often do you floss.

Usually when you’re talking to a stranger you’re not allowed to ask them many personal questions. 

You can ask a stranger what time it is, you can ask them for directions or how soon the bus is coming. That's about it.

But everything changes when a stranger asks you a question - then you get to ask it back to them. It’s a free pass and I love it. I love when people ask how many siblings I have, because then I get to find out how many siblings they have. I love when strangers ask where I’m going, how I cut my hand, or what I’m ordering at a restaurant. The best thing a stranger can ask me is how much I pay for rent.

But the worst thing is when there’s a reason that stranger is asking you the question, so you can’t ask them back, even though you feel like you should be able to. Like when a nurse asks if the veins in my arm are close to the skin. Suddenly I want to ask her the same thing, so badly. It only seems fair. 

Or when my hairstylist asks how long it usually takes for my hair to air dry, I can feel my mouth wanting to say “What about your hair, how long does your hair take to dry?” and I have to bite my tongue to keep my mouth from asking. Biting my tongue reminds me that I never got to ask my dentist how often he flosses.

Bouncers at concerts ask my age, police officers ask where I’m headed, my credit card company asks me my salary, and none of these questions are questions I can ask back. I’ll probably never know what kind of veins my nurse has, where my pharmacist stores her medications, or if my doctor has had any unexpected weight loss recently. 

If my landlord is reading this: Ever since you asked if I own an aquarium or a keyboard I have been dying to know if you own either. And if you own a keyboard, how many keys does it have, and do you use headphones with it or not? Also, this weekend I noticed a new closet in the apartment that I have never seen before. It sounds crazy but it's probably some sort of portal or maybe the previous tenants held a seance. Did the previous tenants own an aquarium? Please respond ASAP.

While I wait I'll be watching this.

Why are you reading in the bathroom.

It's 2014 and a lot of mysteries have been solved: the sun's general whereabouts, how worms pee, ice cubes, but there's one thing no one has any idea about and I think it's because we're all too nervous to ask.

Why is everybody keeping so many books next to the toilet?

Books are great, and I like reading as much as the next person. My family has a friend who stores books in her dishwasher because she washes dishes by hand anyway and needs the extra book storage space. Books in the dishwasher is pretty weird, but it makes more sense to me than books in the bathroom. And I see books in bathrooms all the time.

I have three theories:

THEORY 1: EPIC JOURNEY 

I've always assumed that people must be taking so incredibly long to use the bathroom that they need to prepare for it the way they would for a long commute or a journey west or a trip to outer space. 

They're bringing reading material because they're going in not knowing when they're coming back out.

Why they're in there so long I have no idea. Lack of fiber? Too much fiber? Very long digestive tracts? Those have question marks but they're not questions, I don't really want to know the answers.

astronaut suicides by Sara and Neil

THEORY 2: OVERACHIEVERS

I was talking to my mom on the phone a few months ago about people who have it all together, who are going to school while working and keeping plants alive and wearing mascara and she's not into those people. My mom says some people need to learn to take it easy.

"I went to someone's house the other day," she said, "and there was a book in the bathroom. A book in the bathroom how sad is that, even the two minutes it takes you to sit there and go to the bathroom needs to be useful multitasking time you can spend getting a page ahead in your book. Why can't people just take two minutes off from it all and go to the bathroom."

I have a few additional suggestions for people who read in the bathroom because they like multitasking.

• Do squats instead of sitting so that you strengthen your leg muscles
• Check your arms and any other visible skin for unusual moles
• Recite the Greek alphabet twice while you wash your hands
• Also use that hand-washing time to check your teeth in the mirror in case there's salad in them.

THEORY 3: SECRET HIDEOUT

I think sometimes people want to play Candy Crush and Words with Friends and their real-life friends are tired of them being on their phone so they stay in the bathroom forever. Like the guy in This is 40. Maybe that wasn't This is 40. Whatever movie that was.

Actually it was This is 40, here is proof.

He's playing Words with Friends. See that tea light on the back of the toilet? I have so many questions about bathrooms.

Anyway, maybe some people are the same with magazines and finance books? Maybe they're just looking for a quiet place they can read with their pants down because people won't leave them alone.

We'll never know.

Small world

Lately my social media networks can't get enough of girls who are boys now.

Everyone wants to say how they feel about kids deciding whether they're boys or girls, kids being told whether they’re boys or girls, parents listening to kids about whether they’re boys or girls, whatever,

It just seems like a lot of yelling and not a lot of people asking why there are only two things you can be.

It seems like a sad and small world if it is a world where you can make a human being (you can make a human being!) and then all you can give it is GIRL. And if the girl says “I don’t like girl” the biggest thing you can say back is “Oh no problem - here is BOY. That will be what you like.” 

Two is just not a lot of options. 

If I went too a Kiefer Nissan dealership and all they had was two cars to choose from, I would take my business elsewhere. Even if they let me pick either car. And I think any three-year old would agree with me. 

Guys I know this is real pixilated but it's worth it because click on it it's a link to a factory where you can order slides.

This Maja Angelou Sesame Street song doesn't seem relevant but it is the best video in the world so I'm putting it here anyway. I would do karaoke a lot more often if this song were available.