Flossing, Snot and Intimacy

I was just catching up on my blog reading. Sane without drugs' last post was about her last student teacher. He would blow his nose and ask her if the color of the snot indicated a visit to the doctor. I commented that I felt snot viewing to be sort of intimate. Along with other things such as flossing and putting on make-up. These are things you would only do around close friends and family..... if then. I wear make-up to cover my flaws and I have witnessed myself flossing and it was not a pretty sight. I am a nurse, so viewing snot or inquiring about the color of it doesn't really bother me. The whole purpose of this intro is to say that it brought back a memory I wanted to share...

I worked for a fabric chain along the east coast many (20!!) years ago. I rose from a lowly clerk to a store manager to a district manager. I only went to work there to get the employee discount to feed my fabric fetish that I still have to this day. My district was on the panhandle of Florida and we lived in Tallahassee. My district included two stores in Georgia, one in Alabama and 4 along the gulf coast. Lots and lots of time spent on the road, needless to say.

My immediate boss was this guy from Wisconsin, unfamiliar with the ways of small southern towns and good old boys. Most of my employees wondered about his sexual preference so much so that I asked him and he said he was not gay, not that I cared one way or the other. I have noticed that southern men in particular tend to be homophobic and judgemental.....just an observation of the southern men I have encountered, not a generalization.

On to the story. This meticulous guy from Wisconsin was way into dental hygiene and would floss his teeth while I would drive. I found it to be amusing at first, then annoying. He was on a live forever diet plan that involved a bushel of fruit in the morning, a couple of serving bowls of salad for lunch, then salad again with either potato, bread or meat for dinner. At one point he said that he had all his women on this diet--referring to all the district managers he managed, as if we were a harem of fat heifers to be brought down to a controllable size.

After one meal at a decent dining establishment (cloth napkins!), he must have been out of floss because he picked up the napkin and began cleaning his teeth.....right there at the table! I looked around discreetly to see if anyone else thought it to be in bad taste and saw several folks gaping at him. He seemed not to notice. That weekend I told the family about this bizarre behaviour and we all had a good laugh. Several weeks or so later we ended his visit in my home town and he wanted to go eat supper, so I swung by and picked up my kids....he was, after all, paying. My kids were all typically well behaved being 12 and 15 years old. They joined the conversation and everything was going fairly smoothly until the end of the meal.........when in unison they all three picked up their napkins and began cleaning their teeth. I think I blushed. I was so embarrassed. Can't tell those kids anything!