Recently I worried over a gnawing pain in my tooth. After a week of hot salt-water rinses, I called the dentist’s office and hoped someone was working the final Monday of 2024. To my relief, two hours later I was laid back in a dentist’s chair with a bright light above me. I feared an abscess, followed by an antibiotic and then a root canal.
The hygienist looked in my mouth. “Is your tooth sensitive to hot or cold?”
“No,” I mumbled around her probing instruments.
Then she asked the big question. “Do you eat popcorn?”
Oh, yes, I eat popcorn. I routinely buy giant bags of Skinny Pop or prop up my ancient Stir-Crazy Popper that’s missing a leg and pop Orville’s kernels. Many times, that’s my supper, but this time of year I treat myself to one of those Christmas-decorated tins with cheddar, caramel, and buttered popcorn.
This is not freshly popped from a gourmet popcorn shop in a city, but the type that is stacked a mile high in stores around here. Years ago, the tin was bigger and cheaper and filled to the brim, and the flavors were divided by a three-armed cardboard divider. These days, the varieties are sealed in three small foil bags so hard to open that I resort to scissors. I suspect they are hard sealed with all their preservatives because the popcorn was processed in July.
Once I cut the bags open, I emptied them into the tin because I like this special treat best when the flavors are mixed. I believe salt and sugar are meant to be savored together. The popcorn filled about two-thirds of that tin. Really, it was just too little to share. Even though family was in and out during the holidays, my selfish side never brought that tin out of the pantry. Instead, on evenings alone, I enjoyed this guilty pleasure in front of the TV. After a few days and furtive handful after handful, there was nothing left in the tin.
And now the hygienist was asking me if I ate popcorn. I felt as if I’d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar.
After she poked and prodded in the area that had ached for a week, she showed me a hard popcorn husk, a fourth of an inch long. It had buried itself between my gum and tooth, out of reach of my fingernail and toothpick and my last resort, dental floss.
Will I have learned my lesson? Come on! I imagine I’ll relent to the siren’s call of those Christmas tins next year, too. Why mess with tradition?
But for now, I’m looking forward to starting 2025 without that awful ache. And that’s what I hope for your new year. Besides no aches, I wish you the traditional big three: health, wealth, and happiness and if you’re really really lucky, some freshly popped popcorn.
