You aren’t aware of the huge scandal currently erupting in our nations capital this week, and that’s because you live in a cave.  A deep, dark, dank, damp cave of ignorance.  Fear not, for I am bringing the light. I’m bringing it so far down the deep vacant void of a hole that is your conscious, white light will shining out your other end.  The knowledge catching a ride on those wavelengths of light is the lie behind teeth whitening. You’re whole life is a lie.

First, the background.  Since early last century, an organized group of men(/wo) in white attire known as ‘Dentists’ or ‘Doctors of Dentistry’ (DoD to us in the know) have been misleading you, the common wo/man, about the your teeth.  You see, for decades now everyday Americans have been making appointments, forcing their children to read Highlights magazine in waiting rooms whose stuffy, sterile, tasteless environments were only made worse by the ‘music’ emanating from the speakers, all in pursuit of the mouths holy grail: whiter straighter teeth.

I’ll address the straighter aspect of the above mentioned holy grail first.  Somewhere along the way, a small faction of the DoD decided to combine their scam for whiter straighter teeth, with their sadism.  These wo/men formed a new school of elective and expensive torture which has been labeled  ‘Orthodontics’.  Wikipedia will have you believe that the word was derived from some deprecated language like Greek or French, but I posit that it’s name is an acronym in the beloved language that is my native tongue. Oh really, that hurts? Oh, doh! Oh, not that I care, shithead.

So for straighter teeth, you went to those a-holes.  The other half of the grail was whiter teeth.  For that, we needed the original gangsters, members of the DoD.  At first it was once every two years. That wasn’t enough for their greedy little paws.  They began using British peoples teeth as a scare tactic, and visits became necessary once every year.  Then as British people started to go once every year, and it was evident that it didn’t help them, the American DoD decided that once every six months was the way to do it right.  Dental insurance rates went up and only covered one preemptive visit a year (second visit for the whiteness was outta pocket kiddos!), the variety of toothpastes increased exponentially, and teeth hardly got any whiter.

Teeth Whitening Exposed

Forget about your dentist (I bet that jerk had a ‘No Pants, No Shoes, No Service’ sign on his door anyway)., because you and I, we know better.  We got a guy on the inside, called Facebook Ads.  And according to this mole, all it really takes to achieve the jackpot in the white teeth lottery is paying for something that is free, and sitting still for seven hours (that’s right, seven hours) with a giant white brick that shoots blue lasers into your mouth and makes your lips purple.  No, I’m not kidding.  It’s that easy.

I might be French.  Not really, but today was a super French day for me.  What make’s a day French? I’ll tell you, but with a Memento motif (the time-line is not going to be your traditional beginning to end style).

I found myself at lunch eating McDonald’s with my dad (So French already, right? I mean only the French eat lunch with their fathers).  Visiting the golden arches isn’t a normal occurrence for either of us, but it was the closest food place for our forty-five minute break from an eight hour boating safety class we were taking with the Coast Guard Auxiliary guys.  My order included pineapple (all value meals come with it here) and of course FRENCH fries.  I know right?  How crazy!  I’m pretty much a frog.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Some time ago I was in an accident which damaged the part of my brain that allows me to form short-term memories…kidding, but if you haven’t seen Memento you really should, now would be the time.  But seriously, I was born in Canada (not another joke, I swear).  Canada is pretty much a country version of the Prius, where France is the electric and England is the petrol part of the engine.  Everyone there is pretty much half-french.

After I was born, I ended up in a yacht club where six people were taking this safety course.  One of the guys was named Jacques (Jock for you francophobes). He was talking about when he lived in New Zealand and some other places, so I’m not sure if he was New Zealand French or Canadian French or Real French, but his name was Jacques and he did speak with a slight accent.  In the name of full disclosure, he was also pretty old and sometimes old people just talk funny. So me and Jacques are pretty much best friends now because we are both in it to win it during this eight hour course, and there is only one person sitting between us.

So there I am, a Canadian, who will soon be having French fries for lunch, sitting next to a guy with a French name.  If you had to plot a graph of how French I’ve been in my life, the line would definitely have peaked right there. And then it happens. The instructor is telling us about what mistakes not to make because if we do:

“You are going to get pretty pissed off….excuse my French.”

Hot off the heels of Saturday’s idiom/expression post comes this whopper. I’ve heard it many times before, but never really thought about it.  So here I am, in the middle of my Frenchest day ever, and someone pulls out the ole ‘Excuse my French’ card.  Naturally,  I glance to my left to see if Jacques has taken any offense, and he hasn’t. So I take it for him. I cringe and wince in my chair unnoticed by those who have been tasked with protecting America’s shores from terrorists and criminals while at the same time wondering where the hell that expression came from.