Emma's mom pointed out something last night regarding my raving about how awesome Ex-cop was for giving me his parking spot (and how marvelous it was to park there today, too). Here's what she posted on FB, "Oh the irony. The sexist sob is now your knight in shining polyester." Thus twanging my feminist cord, and trying to rationalize the whole thing. He is sexist, it's true. But did he offer his space out of pure niceness or did he do it because I am a small woman who is always having troubles being blocked in by cars. Could it be a little bit of both? Even if he did it from a macho-cop stand point, is it wrong that I took him up on his offer? Do I have to turn things down just because I am a woman and a sexist man is willing to help me out with an actual problem? Does it rankle me a bit that it was Ex-cop who switched spaces with me? Sure, I would have preferred building services to take care of the issue for me. Except our building services are monkeyfuckergoatballlickers. Yet, Ex-cop has sway over them--MFGBL's really look up to authority figures, even if they are retired and doofy. So, I took the space. I parked in it happily. I acknowledge he is generally an idiot, but he did me a favor. Therefore I must look at it as an altruistic gesture.
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After complaining about my strange mouth pains, it is slowly fading away. I postulated to Kuk Sool Wan friend (I've mentioned him before in relation to martial arts, but I'm being precise today; thus, he will be hence known as KSW) that it might be my tori growing. Then I offered to explain what that meant if he wasn't on top of his palate knowledge. Of course he wasn't! Who is really?
I realize I start to sound like I'm in terrible health, which is not really true; I just have a lot of issues that won't kill me, but will make me complain a lot. However, tori are interesting even if bothersome at times.
Until I was 23 or so, I never really gave a thought to what the inside of anyone's mouth looked like. I've kissed a lot of mouthes, so my tongue was the only thing acquainted with mouthes, and as far as I know, tori are exactly detectable by kissing (I'll do a test with The Boy instructing him to really kiss me hard to see if he can detect anything). I'm not sure about that since I have no idea if I have kissed anyone with tori. I digress.
I got my tongue pierced in college (I believe second semester of freshman year). I had that post in there for many years. I took it out when a dentist pointed out to me how it was causing the gum behind my bottom center teeth to erode. And that my teeth were getting loose, and would eventually fall out. MY WORST FEAR EVER! This dentist did not investigate why a piercing that so many people have without dental damage, and I thought it was just the way my life goes.
It wasn't until I moved to Austin in 1998 that I found out the truth about my mouth. The hygienist was doing her business and suddenly says, "Oh my, you have tori!" Excuse me? I have what, and stop sounding so cutesy with your fingers in my mouth. After she told me about tori, I wondered why no other doctor and dentist who had ever looked in my mouth, never said something.
Basically I have bony outcroppings in my mouth, mandibular torus and buccal exostosis. There are several theories about how and why they form. The mandibular growths are on the inside bottom of my mouth. The buccal ones are on the outside of my teeth, mostly on the uppers. I luckily do not have any on the roof of my mouth. The ones on the bottom inside are the worst, and the reason why my post was rubbing away my gumline was because I have these bones that almost touch each other and leave only a pinky's width of space to the bottom of my mouth. The post had to sit against my bottom teeth because it had nowhere else to go. Gah.
One theory of why they grow is stress and a person's reaction to stress by clenching and grinding his/her teeth. The agitation of the teeth makes the bone want to make sure those teeth stay in place so it grows more of itself. Yes, I had a very stressful childhood, but there's one thing I can tell you, I did not clench or grind my teeth. My allergies have always made me mostly a mouth breather. Until lately. Something changed a few months ago and I started being able to breathe through nose, and wouldn't you know it, I'm totally a clincher. I wake up in the morning with my teeth aching and my tongue ridged by the edges of my teeth. Lovely!
Thus I thought maybe my tori were growing and driving me nuts. I'll probably never know. Heretofore the worst part of tori is how thin the tissue is over the bones. Almost anything can scratch the fuck out of it and leave my mouth irritated for a week. And I hypostatised that my lisping as a child was probably because my tongue sits level with the top of my bottom teeth, instead of hanging out below them. Let's blame the tori on my occasionally mumbling and slurring. I'm not drunk, it's my tori!
This is not my mouth, but it is very close to what the bottom of my mouth looks like except my tori are just as thick in the back as they are in the front. I even used to have one of those permanent retainers, but I managed to worry that off in just a couple of years from receiving it.
The best advise the dentist has? "Lips together, teeth apart." Catchy, no?
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