Gum Control

Story Sent in by Pedro:

Christine looked good on our date, but she had a cotton swab tucked behind each ear, like pencils. My first thought was that she had placed them there while readying, and had forgotten to take them off.

I said, hoping to appear polite, "You have swabs behind your ears."

She nodded. "I know. How was your day?" That was all the discussion we had about them.

We split an appetizer and as we ate and talked, she nonchalantly took one out from behind her ear and swabbed around the inside of her mouth. I didn't say anything about it, and I'd never seen someone do that before. She went about it as if it was perfectly normal.

When dinner came, more of the same. She switched off between swabs, and set about constantly rubbing them about the inside of her mouth, usually after every couple of bites. She often had a fork in one hand and a swab in the other, and when she was done with a swab, she'd put it back behind her ear. It was troubling, but I said nothing about it.

After we had eaten, and Christine had two very used cotton swabs tucked behind her ears, the waitress asked us if we wanted dessert. We decided to split a slice of layered chocolate cake.

As the waitress went to retrieve it, I asked Christine, "Do the swabs really help to keep your mouth clean?"

She said, "Better than floss. Here." She took one out from behind her ear and held it right before my eyes. It was discolored, brown and yellow, and had little bits of food clinging to it. I thought for a nightmarish moment that she was offering it to me to use, but she said, "Look at all this that would've otherwise been in my mouth."

With that, she tucked it behind her ear. I asked, "And you reuse them?"

She replied, "I try not to, but I haven't had a chance to buy new ones yet, so if you rinse them and dry them, they keep for a little bit."

Good to know. Of course, she went mad with them, in her mouth, between every bite of cake. She was nice otherwise, but that was a pretty big hurdle for me, so that was our first and only date.