My Tongue
by Scott Teel

Primitive man used to use sharpened bone as a cutting implement, and it worked quite well. I know it worked well because I have the sharpest one in the history of ever in my mouth right now.

I had a cavity in a molar toward the rear, and it was a deep one, the kind where you can feel the drill just millimeters away from poking your brains. So the dentist hollowed out the tooth like a watermelon, leaving just an outer shell, then filled it in with the filling. Only, I was his last patient of the day, and he was kind of itching to go home, so he didn’t really fill the hole all the way to the bottom. So that outer shell still sticks down on the inside edge, and it’s sharp and jagged; it’s like having a broken shard of glass in my mouth at all times. So when I bit my tongue with it the other day, it really, really hurt.

I wasn’t even eating, I was talking out loud to no one, my biggest audience, and some word brought my teeth together and my tongue moved over for proper pronunciation and they all met. The noise it made in my head, and the way it felt to my teeth, was the kind of noise and feel you get when you bite down on a fatty piece of gristle in a chunk of meat, kind of an unpleasant “grunch.” Of course, the tongue felt it a little differently, and in a fraction of an instant, my mouth had sprung back open so fast it nearly dislocated my jaw, and I squeezed my eyes shut in pain and said, if I remember correctly, “Oahhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

So now it won’t heal, because the tongue keeps rubbing against that jagged edge in the exact spot it was bitten, and since it’s a little swollen, I keep biting it and making it worse. Yesterday, in trying to chew a Pop Tart without biting that side of my tongue, I overcompensated and bit the other side.

So my tongue is very sensitive to pain right now, and as a result I have an appreciation for the tongue that I never had before. The pain lets me feel, whether I like it or not, almost every movement of the tongue. I never in my life realized how much the tongue moves around in the mouth, it’s like a cat’s tail, never sitting still. It seems to have a role in almost everything I do. When I blow my nose, it goes into a squeeze against the roof of my mouth. Eating and drinking, obviously. But even when I’m just sitting still, reading or thinking (reading mostly), I’ve noticed that my tongue is in constant motion. It’s always wriggling around in there, doing tongue things. I have to concentrate to keep it still, and then saliva builds up. I think part of the tongue’s job is to corral saliva and keep it moving.

When I swallow, my tongue presses against the roof of my mouth, similar to the nose-blowing. It has a whole regimen of duties to do, and there’s probably some scientific name for it, but all I can say is that it’s always in motion, which you’d think would be dangerous, because it’s bad enough being stuck between 32 smashing pieces of hardened enamel without zipping all over. When I’m eating, I notice my tongue moves food around so it all gets chewed, pushing a Froot Loop between the teeth and darting away just before being mashed itself. It does this without me thinking about it at all, many times in a few seconds. It knows what to do. I can see why they say it’s the strongest muscle in the body. It’s constantly working out.

But in that environment, mistakes are inevitable. A tongue can’t be on its toes all the time. Really, it’s the brain’s fault for sending the signals to the tongue to move and the teeth to chew at the same time, like when a railroad employee puts up a wrong signal and two trains crash into each other.

The tongue is even a part of romance, finding its way into kissing, though my tongue has gotten way out of practice on that one, thanks to my personality or my appearance, or both. The tongue is ready, just in case, but then again, so is my manhood. At least the tongue has other functions. It’s depressing to think about.

© 2005 Scott Teel