Breath strokes

There once was a guy with bad breath. And no, that’s not the beginning of a limerick.

 

Not only does the man exist, but he was a coworker of mine for a time – long ago, when I was but a wide-eyed rookie on the make. (As opposed to a cynical schmuck on the make.) This unfortunate fellow had breath so foul it had become a kind of legend; children tell ghost stories around campfires that aren’t nearly as horrifying as half a puff from this fellow’s noxious cavern of a mouth. 

 

It would begin as a faint cloud around his head and then spread with alarming range and force, withering flowers and triggering gag reflexes within a shockingly large radius. If the U.S. government were made aware of the sheer power of the guys’ halitosis, he’d immediately be whisked away to the Middle East and employed as a biological weapon. The Islamic State would surrender their arms, sequester themselves in an underground bunker and never be seen again, save for the occasional beer run or selfie with a malnourished camel.

 

It was like a clump of rotting flowers wrapped in a deerskin sack.

 

Or a petrified dinosaur turd slicked up with dog slobber.

 

Can you endure one more of these? I’ve got a real peach.

 

It was like moldy bread crammed into an armpit and lathered with decade-old Nutella.

 

Yuck.

 

Bad breath is one of those ailments no one likes to talk about. It’s a strangely personal thing, tied up as it is with a person’s natural musk – a biological effervescence, as it were. No one likes to think that any aspect of their body is gross, and so legions of unfortunate stink-breathed souls live their entire lives never knowing they have the power to kill iguanas and small birds with a simple exhale. I can’t imagine any other physical conditions are subject to the same level of tactful secrecy.

 

“Well, Joe, according to Mrs. Bubbledink’s charts, she’s got an advanced case of malaria. Let’s not tell her, though. We wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings.”

 

If anything, you’d think that knowledge of one’s own lizard breath would be empowering. It’s an affliction that can, in many cases, be remedied easily enough with a few unobtrusive lifestyle changes.

 

A quick trip to WebMD – everyone’s favorite web-based self-diagnosis tool – reveals the most common causes of bad breath to be the obvious suspects: diet and cleaning habits. There’s no real secret here. There are certain serious conditions which can augment bad breath, like pneumonia, bronchitis, and liver and kidney problems, but these are in the minority, and in the case of my eye-watering former workmate, I think he’s more or less in the clear. He never went on hacking spurts of machine gun-level force, and otherwise seemed virile enough, attacking his assignments with the gusto of a ’roided-up linebacker, albeit with fewer emotional outbursts. 

 

He did, however, eat a lot of burgers. McDonald’s burgers. And as anyone who’s eaten at McDonald’s knows well, their burgers are rife with minced onions.

 

Onions alone would not be enough to explain his mutant funk. His overall aura was more like the bastard lovechild of a giant bratwurst and a butt-sniffing Australian dingo. But they surely didn’t help. Onions, like all other foods, are broken down in the mouth, absorbed into the bloodstream during digestion, and carried off to, among other places, the lungs – where they can resurface as an olfactory assault. Foods with stronger odors, sensibly enough, translate into stronger odors emitted from the mouth, which is why you never see dating couples noshing on seaweed and old engine parts.

 

The fix? Easy. Drop the onion-laced burgers (and the jalapeno dip, and the grouse necks dipped in garlic butter), and replace them with something boring, like apples. You may be left wanting in terms of culinary excitement, but no one’s ever said, “Eww, step back, dude! What is that, Golden Delicious?”

 

Oral hygiene is of course the other common culprit, and adapting to a new routine can be tricky. Personally, I’ve never been able to adhere to a consistent flossing schedule. I’ll succumb to Floss Fever and go ape on the ol’ gums for about a week, during which time I feel absurdly virtuous, like I’ve just donated money to cancer research or cleaned Lucky Strikes off a beach. Then I start to feel silly with a string in my teeth and go slack for several days, letting sweet pea skin accumulate next to virtual nests of those brown crusty things that are in popcorn. Do those crusty things have a name? They should have a name.

 

Painfully aware of my lax ways, I try to avoid talking into peoples’ faces while I’m on these breaks from flossing. How terrible it would be to rival my good buddy Stinkbreath in the legendary smell department. Better to retain my current legend as a man whose piercing falsetto can make spiders explode.

 

Again, the fix is easy. Suck it up and start cleaning house. You might even find that silver earring you lost when you blacked out on the Tilt-A-Whirl.

 

People are stinky, when you get right down to it. Between brushing, flossing, bathing and washing, we spend a great deal of our time subduing our natural proclivity to reek. It’s a necessary endeavor, but well worth the fight, since neglect in this area can lead to unwanted reputations, as is the case with my mushroom-breathed compatriot. I haven’t seen the man in years, but I imagine his oral swamp is still the cause of many a noxious cloud, polluting his personal space with an aroma more pungent than a moldy golf bag stuffed with rotten oranges.

 

Or a half-melted tractor tire lathered in old salsa.

 

One more, because I can: a pair of ancient underwear drenched with the sweat of an alcoholic sumo wrestler.

 

I’m tellin' you, I’ve got a million of ’em.