Firefighting

Yesterday afternoon, after a hard morning’s shopping, Terry I decided to go to our favourite local restaurant for lunch.

Well, we got there, sat down and the waitress took our order. Everything was just peachy. In the middle of the table, though, there was a candle, and next to the candle, there was a giant, paper flower. Both of these were directly in my line of sight, and obscuring my view of Terry, so I picked them both up and moved them to the side of the table.

And, in doing so, I set the flower on fire.

When I say “on fire”, I don’t mean, “It was smoking slightly around the edges.” No, we’re talking big, dramatic, “OMG WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!” flames. Terry grabbed the flower and frantically started blowing on it to put them out, and the look of sheer panic on his face, coupled with the fact that he was holding a giant, burning flower… well, people, I’m ashamed to admit that the first thought that went through my mind was, “Damn, I wish I had my camera!”

Anyway, Terry managed to get the flames out, and we continued with our (very pleasant) lunch, after which I had my first experience of removing and inserting my Invisalign in a public place. Which was… yeah.

I managed to get it out OK, by dint of ducking under the table on the pretext of getting something out of my handbag, and quickly whipping the thing out and into its case. This was fairly easy, because in the last week I’ve become quite the expert at getting the brace in and out, and as I was, um, under the table at the time, only a midget would have seen me do it.

Getting it back in, however, was not quite so easy, because before replacing the brace, both teeth and brace have to be thoroughly cleaned, and as we weren’t planning on going straight home after lunch, I knew they’d both have to be cleaned in the bathroom of the restaurant.

Now, I don’t really know why this was bothering me. I knew from previous visits that these are nice, spotlessly clean bathrooms, but let’s face it, it’s still a public toilet, and, I don’t know, there’s just something a bit personal about cleaning your teeth, isn’t there? Something that makes you prefer to do it in private, rather than with the audience of a small, but curious pre-teen girl, say?

The girl was washing her hands at one of the two basins in the restroom when I entered. Knowing that children generally find me a figure of fun anyway, and that people around here tend to have a very sensitive “weirdness” detector (i.e. they think just about everything is “SOOOO weird!”, I decided not to whip out my toothbrush in front of her. “No problem,” I thought, “I’ll just quickly use the bathroom, and by the time I’m done, she’ll have finished washing her hands, and I’ll be free to clean my teeth in private.”

But no. The girl continued to wash her hands the whole time I was in the cubicle, and was still washing them when I finally emerged a few minutes later. As I took my place at the basin next to her and started to wash my hands, she quickly ducked into the cubicle I’d just vacated, and then almost instantly re-emerged to begin washing her hands all over again. Either there was some kind of OCD hand-washing thing going on there, or my appearance had instantly tripped her weirdness detector into overdrive, and she was lingering deliberately in the hope that I’d do something to entertain her.

Well, I had no choice. Time was a-wastin’, and the brace had to go back in, so I resignedly got out my toothbrush and toothpaste and did the business, while Pre-Teen watched me with undisguised curiosity throughout. I suspect this is something I’m just going to have to get used to as I continue with my Invisalign journey, for in the same way that The Others hound me through shops, all crowding into whichever small, obscure corner I’ve found to surreptitiously try on a jacket or something, I just KNOW that I’m doomed to spend the next six months cleaning my teeth in public restrooms, while all of my fellow diners crowd in behind me to watch. I’m not sure why I expected any different, to be honest.

In slightly brighter news, I took a dress to my mum’s house for alteration on Satuday, and successfully managed to bring it back home again without dropping it randomly and never seeing it again. Baby steps, people, baby steps…