I'm a Floss Fraud, and who are you?

I've got a dental appointment on Wednesday, and I know what he's going to say before I even get there.

"Have you been flossing?"

And it's a dumb question, because he knows I haven't been, not the way he means, and he knows my answer as well as I do:

"Ummm, recently ..."

When recently means I picked up a bit of dental floss either an hour before I turned up, or the night before, and did a bit of a floss out of guilt.

I hate flossing. And I'm not too fond of dental appointments either, because dentists mean the flossing question, plus sitting back in a chair with your mouth opened wide and someone blowing air on your teeth - and a lot worse if you have a filling - and forking out a couple of hundred dollars for the pleasure, often even if you have nothing wrong with you.

Dentists aren't covered by Medicare, an d they're not much fun. Which is why I don't go every six months like they tell me I should.

And you lose out no matter what.

You sit there hoping like mad you don't have a filling. But if you don't, they tell you you're fine, charge you an outrageous fee, and you walk out saying "I paid that amount for ... nothing!"

Then there's the floss. My dentist always tells me about plaque and how I ought to floss. Of course I ought to floss. But I'm a bad flosser. I was born without the floss skills. If there was a flossing Olympics, I wouldn't finish the race. If there were a Flossing Idol, I'd be one of those disgraced "Unforgettables". Nobody flosses worse than I do. I'm sure of it.

Of course, I always draw blood, though my dentist assures me that I shouldn't have to. But I always do. This puts me off flossing for some time til I feel guilty, maybe several months later, and I tentatively try flossing again, and draw blood again, and then get put off again. And so it goes on. I usually floss right before the dentist so I can say, "Ummmm, recently!" And give him a big goofy smile which fools nobody at all.

Then I get the floss lecture and I hand over a wad of cash, get guilt-tripped into flossing the next time I brush - and draw blood again.

Yuk!

I'm sure all this is meant to be a great metaphor or something, I can't figure out what yet.