First World Problem, Part 9
Today I was "working" while sitting on my couch which really means I was Googling things while eating a teriyaki wheat noodle steak bowl and adjusting my bets in my Britney Death Pool '07 contest. Then I got a piece of steak stuck between my teeth, but Britney was being admitted to rehab which meant I couldn't very well leave the room to get some floss, but I had a drink sitting next to me with a nice plastic straw in it. A plastic straw that, thanks to evolution, was produced to match the exact circumference of my left incisor while also having an edge that could be folded to fit directly in between my teeth.
It was the perfect ad hoc floss, and since I was in a desperate situation I started gnawing away on it to wiggle the ends between my teeth in a furious attempt to dislodge the piece of sirloin that was becoming increasingly aggravating. As Britney's manager issued a statement asking for her privacy, an act that's as much of an oxymoron as the news anchor saying how shocking the new rehab news was, my hand slipped and I stabbed the straw up into my gum line, affixing it snugly around my tooth under the piece of steak.
This was just great, because not only was the piece of steak still there, but now I had a whole drinking straw stuck on my tooth too and it refused to budge. About five minutes later after wiggling and yanking it the whole time hired lawyers on TV were playing out a make believe custody battle for Britney's children, the straw would not move! Suddenly I had this flashback from a time when I was about 7 years old and I was chewing on a Ziploc bag and the bag slipped up over my front tooth and lodged itself in my gum and I ran through the house screaming and crying because I was certain if the bag was pulled out, my front tooth would come with it. There I was 20 years later in the exact same situation, only this time I had steak stuck in there too.
This is where I put down my teriyaki bowl and moved the computer off my lap and frantically started pulling on the end of the straw. I sat there alternating between the panic of losing a tooth over a piece of chewed steak and stone cold lucidity that all I needed was to decrease the friction between the tooth and the straw to eliminate the vacuum that had formed and was currently causing me to see my life flashing before my eyes. I saw myself lying there prostrate in front of the TV, Britney spotted at rehab in a pink tank top and shaved head sparkling in the sun, with a drinking straw sucked down my throat capping off my windpipe. The only logical thing for me to do would be to take a pair of sewing scissors and start snipping away from the bottom to top at the straw, which I did while remembering every bad episode of Rescue: 911 and wondering why I didn't have a trained dog in the house who could call for back up.
Before I broke the straw free from the death trap in between my teeth, I had a fleeting and shocking vision of this straw and this bit of steak being the death of me. I saw myself sitting next to Britney Spears in hell, she only two years younger than me but a millionaire with a shaved head and toxicology levels off the charts, wearing something neon green and ultraviolet, certainly something she will probably die in that would be rolled around her belly and covered in mud when we met.
I saw myself asking how she checked in, trying to be kind and hide my jealousy over her premature wealth while avoiding the obvious disaster of our afterlife fortunes, and she'd tell me it was the bacon wrapped Cheeto chaser she had after a 32-ouncer of liquid TrimSpa that did her in, and the vodka-soaked waffle she used to lap it up didn't help either. Then we'd bond in our demise and she'd ask me how I got there, and I'd sheepishly make up some grand lie about a Ferrari accident while I was distracted curing cancer on my laptop in the drivers seat.
She'd laugh and say, "Yeah, those Ferrari's are tricky when you shift!" I'd laugh along with her and rub my tongue against my sore gums and taste steak.
