Ginger-vitis

According to my dentist I have "ginger-vitis". Great. So not only was I blessed with crap skin and orange hair, but I get gum disease too?

Leafing through a recent issue of Cosmopolitan in the waiting room (well, it was from 1996, recent in dentist-waiting-room terms) I entertained myself with a short quiz. "How many times a month do you weigh yourself?" was the first test. Pfft. What kind of a question is that? Surely that depends on what month it is? Obviously for a longer month, like October, the answer is going to be something like 62, whereas for a particularly short month, like February, the answer will be, ah... uh... what's 28 times two? Hmm...

Luckily I was saved from too much mathematical brain-ache by the dentist calling me to The Chair. He had a good poke around before telling me about the ginger-vitis and deciding to send me to "toothbrush school", where they will teach me to brush my teeth, apparently. Toothbrush school? I've never heard of such a thing.

"Thath rih-ick!" I exclaimed.

"Sorry?" he frowned.

"Oh nevermind," I said. His English wasn't great and my Icelandic, as usual, was rubbish, so throwing in the word "ridick" with a little round mirror in my mouth wasn't helping.

"How many times a month do you floss?" he frowned down at me again, from behind his mint-green surgical mask. Floss? I've never flossed in my life. I once saw a woman flossing while she was driving and it looked very dangerous.

"Uhhh..." I said, trying to think up a good lie. "Uhhh... well, doesn't that depend on the month? Like, for a particularly short month, let's say, uh, February, it would be a bit less, like maybe, ah... uh..."

My first class at toothbrush school is next week. I will report back.