teeth, tootsie pops and plane karma

I have a condition.  Plane karma.  It manifests every time I decide to fly somewhere and buy a ticket.  I have had some doozie things happen to me on flights all over the United States.  (You can read about a couple of them here and here if you are curious.)  Some of it I brought on my own head, and some of it was just being in the wrong place at the wrong time and getting smacked in the head with stupid.

I have had a long streak of what I would call the absence of karma.  Maybe writing about it was the reason, or maybe it was just the fact that I was trying to avoid doing anything stupid.  Either way it has been nice.

Then yesterday I talked to my daughter on the phone because she had broken a tooth on a popcorn hull.  Wait, I thought, this is the daughter who hates popcorn.  Won't touch it.  Well, it turns out she will, if it is covered in marshmallow goo.  She was worried about pain that might arrive ANY SECOND, and I was reassuring her and thinking to myself that would never be me, I have teeth of steel.

Wrong.  I decided to enjoy a Tootsie Pop on the way home from the office yesterday.  I'd gone in to get my paperwork pile (that reproduces like rabbits) under control before I leave on Tuesday.  On a plane.

The only thing left when I bit down was the thin candy coating over the chewy Tootsie center.  Do any of you remember that owl in the Tootsie Pop commercial who asks how many licks does it take to get to the center, right before crunching it on about the third lick?  Well, I was careful and had about worn the taste buds off my tongue before I bit down.  Felt that satisfying crunch and chewy chocolate goodness dance across the remaining taste buds in my mouth.  Perhaps a bit crunchier than normal.  I swallowed and then about a second later I felt a sharp edge on my tooth.  The place where the dentist had put a small filling because the tooth had broken there before.  (Instructing me to avoid eating hard things like popcorn and hard candy while he was filling it.)

I had just swallowed my filling.

I dialed Wretch back and told her what happened in between a long string of expletives.

We laughed through broken teeth.

I have to get this tooth fixed before I fly because I can't keep my tongue from finding it, and this is what my mouth looks like when I do:

Plane karma returns.      


...and life is good. ~cath
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