As long as we’re on the subject of cake…

This is a picture of Dad, Interrupted and I at a wedding in the mid-2000s, I think. It’s a wonderful picture of DI, whom I think is just the handsomest guy around. It would almost be my favorite picture ever of the two of us, but for that stupid smile on my face.

WTF, Mom, Interrupted? I don’t think I’ve ever posed for a picture without grinning ear to ear, except when instructed otherwise by artistic photographers.

Well, I’ll tell you WTF it was: major gum surgery, or at least the aftermath of same. The inside of my mouth looked like Frankenstein’s monster in there, and not in the fun way. Big black honking stitches everywhere, each stitch representing part of my periodontist’s Jag payment, not one penny of which I resent. The guy’s a genius.

The thing about gum surgery is that it leaves you in pain, but unlike other procedures I’ve endured, the pain gets worse over time, not better, until you are about ready to go postal the day the stitches come out.

On this day, at this lovely wedding, I was ready to die. If I had taken enough Vicodin to be pain-free, I would have been a lovely zombie accompaniment to that Frankenstein lurching around.

And the cake I mentioned? I couldn’t even eat one bite of the yummy wedding cake; it felt like I was chewing on ground glass.

Floss, people. Like your lives depended on it. Or at least your mouth.

What the heck is she doing now?

© E. Stocking Evans 2016