Flossing

Animals don’t really need to clean their teeth as much as we do, or they have other ways of coping. Hippopotami open their mouths and little birds are happy to fly in and pick away at their teeth to clean them. Sharks just grow entire new rows of teeth as replacements. But in addition to brushing our teeth (because compared to most other animals, we eat a lot of powdered sugar) we humans floss. I don’t know what evolutionary advantages we gain from having teeth that require this kind of maintenance, but I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering if it’s worth it.

And perhaps there’s no advantage. Maybe it’s simply a drawback of having a giant brain that craves (and dutifully rewards) sugar intake, and our genetically programmed, socially coordinated brain conspiracy has finally achieved its evolutionary goal: unlimited corn syrup. Or maybe it’s a side effect of developing the technology we call cooking. We don’t eat extremely tough things like antelope bones and tree branches anymore: there’s no need to chew as much before swallowing and so there also isn’t any attendant tooth-scouring.

But teeth are very important to the enjoyment of food and the production of speech—so we must floss. We must floss, despite the fact that it feels a little unnatural; a little uncomfortable. We must floss, even though it takes just a little more time than we’d like to spend each night before bed. We must make these clumsy attempts to coordinate hands, eye and jaw in the mirror; struggling with a string too short to tie any knot, yet somehow too long to easily manipulate in our mouth; thin and fine enough to cut off circulation to our fingertips and paradoxically so stout that no neighboring teeth will let it pass between them without great resolve and determination.

Which is only somewhat easier than trying to find precisely the right kind of weird-ass, disposable flossing utensils to buy at the store.

Dammit.