The Miracle of Floss

Today we mark a milestone in the Swiss Swope household. This is the first time we have ever, in all our days, reached the end of a spool of dental floss.

Do you know how hard that is? At the manufacturer, they pack like 12 miles of floss into each of those little dispensers! Actually, it's usually only 25-50m, but that's still a lot for such a small job. And don't start with the wise-cracks about some mouths being bigger than others. It's just a good thing floss doesn't have an expiration date.

I know what you're going to say, "But flossing is so good for your health. Why haven't you been doing it regularly enough to reach the end of a spool before now?"

Well, I don't know anything about butt flossing being good for your health, but I am well aware that dental flossing is good for your teeth and gums. But since our teeth are pretty good, Steph and I have both been pretty negligent in this regard.

That is, until our recent visits to the local Swiss dental tormentor (as recounted here). We now have this nifty new sonic vibro toothbrush that is probably rated for use in delicate archaeological digs. And we've also been flossing more regularly.

However, I must confess that Steph and I did not accomplish this feat entirely on our own. I came home from the gym one afternoon to find Steph on the phone and Asher sitting on the guest bed entwined in several feet of floss (still only a minute fraction of a typical spool) . He appeared to be trying to lace his feet to his overalls, but Steph said it kept him quiet while she talked and he wasn't hurting anything.

I suspect she was also curious to see if the floss would ever run out. It's one of those great mysteries, like how many licks does it take to reach the center of a tootsie roll tootsie pop. I thought floss dispensers could be similar to the Biblical basket of endless fish & bread - every time you close the lid, the contents replenish themselves and never run out. That turned out not to be the case. But they do put so much floss on a single spool that, if Jesus had a typical container of floss back when he fed the 5000, every one of those people could have cleaned the bread and fish from between there teeth and that is no exaggeration.