Shorts and the Dangers of Dental Hygiene

Note the extra ventilation option. Very cooling in the summer heat.

I have a pair of shorts I am quite attached to.  I got them many eons years ago when I was in the Army (British) and they served me well through many trials and tribulations.

They bore the scars of many encounters with paint, blood, rats, ladders and on one hopefully never to be repeated occasion, the incident with a feral sheep.  (Don't believe that sheep are docile, ambulatory balls of fluffy wool, they're vicious, smelly, greasy and have an unerring ability to head-butt a bloke's more tender areas)

A real nasty bastard

When I came back home from a successful hardware gathering expedition to the local Mitre 10 (A big D.I.Y. store) I decided to change back into my trusty shorts.  I don't as a rule wear them when I am out in public, as my gleaming and pasty-white legs, covered as they are with varicose bumps and twists, are just too much for the ladies, and I don't want to get mobbed again.

Mobbed again.  Why can't they just leave me alone?

I couldn't find them.  I was sure I'd left them standing in the corner of the bedroom. (I don't have to hang them up, they're quite capable of standing on their own.)

I checked the garage; nope, not there.. 
I checked the back garden; nope, not there.
I checked the bathroom; nope, not there either.

So I did what I should have done at the start.

"Seen my shorts Dear?"  I asked my beloved.
"Hanging up to dry " was the casual response.
"You washed them?" I gasped
"Yes, they're hanging up on the rotary dryer" she said,  "I didn't want to put them near my clothes"

It was true.  She'd actually washed them. My trusty Army shorts will never be the same again. Shorts need to mature slowly, absorbing the experiences of life, they don't need, and never should be washed. 
That just ruins the whole thing.

What was I going to do about the flies?

My shorts had been great at repelling flies, cats, neighbours and other noxious pests.  I was going to have to start from scratch. 

I plan to lock them away with my tools in the garage at night, so She can't get her hygienic little hands on them, but it'll take me months before they're back to any semblance of their previous character-laden presence. 

I wonder if I could speed up the maturing process by helping out with my friend's sheep shearing (she owns a lifestyle block with about 8 sheep).

No.  Too risky.

I'll just have to let nature take it's slow but thorough course.  Cleaning out the goldfish pond tomorrow would just have to do.

Cleaning the Goldfish pond

---

The dangers of dental hygiene.

Many years ago, the company I worked for decided that they would be better off without a sales force, and they made all of us redundant.  I had been working for them for almost 3 years, but no redundancy packages were offered, just that we could keep the company car for up to 3 months.  I needed a job quickly, so I could keep my beloved and our young family in the style to which they had become accustomed.

I checked the papers (this was before the Internet, when job ads. in National newspapers and professional journals were about the only way to find a job).

There were three options available to me in Scotland.

Life Insurance Sales.  No. I wasn't that desperate yet. I'd hang onto my soul a little longer.

Estate Agent.  No.  I still had a modicum of self-respect. I'd wait until I was really desperate.

Dental Equipment Sales.  I shuddered.  I applied.  I was accepted.

I did a lot of training with them, and to be honest, they were a good company to work for, and they produced dental hand tools of the best quality.
One of the first things they gave me was a sample case, containing an example of every tool they made.  From extraction forceps, to elevators to specialised scalers.

Extraction Forceps

 I enjoyed the science and technology side of the job, but every day I had to go into many dentists' surgeries, listen to the screams, groans and pitiful begging of the victims patients. It became too much after a year, and I moved to a much nicer job, selling VD testing kits. 

Dental Elevators

But I kept many of the sample tools.

Most of them have been lost over the years, but the small specialised scalers were really useful in model making or small intricate projects.  I always kept them in my tool kit, and always kept them nice and sharp. 
Last week, my beloved asked me to lend her one of my favourites, an S204 scaler, to allow her to get something out of her teeth.  I did warn her that it was amazingly sharp, and to be careful about using it as it could cause damage to the enamel if misused.
I forgot all about the scaler until last night, when I discovered where my beloved had stored it.

The business end of the scaler

She had put it in with our toothbrushes, in the old whisky glass by the bathroom sink.
I discovered this when I was washing my face.  As many of us do, I bent down quickly to rinse my face, and when I lifted my head (a bit faster due to the pain reflex), the scaler came with me, because I had impaled my eyebrow on the bloody thing.
To be fair, it wasn't that painful, but I realised how close I'd been to impaling my right eye on the ultra-sharp tip of the S204.

Almost

Then I shuddered.  I could easily have been blinded in that eye. 

I didn't say anything to my beloved, she would have been horrified to know how close a seemingly innocuous action of hers had been to causing me permanent disability.

I just locked it away with my tools and put an elastoplast on my eyebrow.

'Nuff said.

Isn't Love great?