by Author Name Withheld 135

Created on: June 12, 2009

If I have a bit of a heavy night, perhaps indulging in a little too much to drink and then deciding that I absolutely have to have some hideous form of kebab before the world will be ok again, I will undoubtedly wake up the next morning with a pretty bad taste in my mouth. I will groan, wonder what form of genetically modified animal died in my mouth over night and brush my teeth. Invariably, I will feel the need to brush them several times that morning. Why? Because bad breath tastes...well.... terrible!

So how is it that those who have chronic bad breath all the time (ok, ok, those without a medical reason then) either can't taste it or don't feel the need to fix it?

This is one reason that I absolutely detest travelling on busy public transport at peak times. The Law of Sod dictates that I will end up standing up at the front of a bus squished between a somewhat round fellow who has failed to find his shower so far this decade and someone around the same height as me who has just come from smoking thirty cigarettes, drinking two litres of cat-urine cider, eating half the garlic supply of Northern Europe and who is currently growing their own fungus underneath their tongue. This person will inevitably feel the need to gesture to me about the hideous body odour of the man against whose stomach my right cheek is now pressed. She will want to do this subtly so as not to offend the fellow and will lean in really close and whisper, 'bloomin' 'eck. He's a stinker.' And right there, in that one single whisper, I will inhal enough alcohol fumes to get instantaneous liver sclerosis and sufficient mouldy nicotine to require the immediate use of a nebuliser. Like now, please. Then I am left with a choice. I can turn my head which will mean that, however briefly, my nose will be in contact with Mr. Sweat (whose underarms are growing new living organisms) or I can chance another whiff of the worst breath I have had the misfortune of encountering in my life. Deciding that his BO is probably considerably less toxic than her breath, I opt for the former. I turn my head as quickly as possible and at last... relief.

But of course, bad breath does not only plague public transport.It plagues romance too! In my teens, I had a terrible crush on a young man a couple of years older than me. He looked like something fresh out of a boyband (at the time I thought that was a good thing) and even had his own car. That made him superbly cool. I crushed on that lad for months and months before he even spoke to me. Shortly after, he invited me to the cinema. Of course, that was a request I was never going to turn down and I excitedly got ready on the night of the film and went along. And then, right after the opening trailers, he leant in for the kiss. It was all a little slow motion, and not in the romantic sense either. From the second he turned his head to mine I could smell his breath. And I knew what was coming. But I couldn't stop it. I could either knock him back and face a very awkward remainder of the date. or I could kiss him and try my hardest not to heave. I chose the latter. He was so gorgeous that for about three months I had been imagining kissing him would be some sort of minor miracle and that life would be wonderful after that and I, in my teenage thought process, would be the happiest person on the planet. The reality was that I was left feeling somewhat sick with the distinct taste of a dead badger on my lips. No amount of popcorn will ever hide that taste. Believe me.

I propose that we, of good breath, be permitted and actively encouraged to carry mint spray around to attack those of not o good breath. This should be a government funded initiative. Anyone with me?

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