How Did I Get to be So Ridiculous?

I was frantically shoving a sandwich into my mouth  after working out the other day, and I almost bit my finger.

And then I bit my tongue.

Hard.

I tried to keep chewing my peanut butter and jelly sandwich while my eyes teared up.  I kept thinking, "It's OK, it isn't that bad.  The pain will fade," but it kept hurting.

It was like stubbing your toe, but instead of the pain fading, it gets worse and worse.  I unintentionally let out a very zombie like moan from my cubicle before I could stop myself.

Ow.

My PB&J tasted like blood and strawberries.

It hurt for hours.  I took to sticking out my tongue when I thought no one was looking because it hurt to have my it inside my mouth.  It hurt to eat. It hurt to talk.  It hurt to drink beer.

Boyfriend caught me "resting my tongue out" and laughed at me.  I tried to explain that my tongue hurt too much to keep inside my mouth, but I'm sure I looked really stupid talking with my tongue sticking out like that, so I can't blame him at all for continuing to laugh.

As bad as it was, though, it did heal, and I forgot about it.

A few days later, I was driving to work.

Maybe my tongue was still swollen from the previous mastication accident.

Maybe I was THAT out of practice blowing bubblegum balloons.

Maybe the Extra sugar-free gum I was chewing was just that AMAZING.  Seriously, their apple pie gum is shockingly flavorful.

Maybe I was distracted by the hot air balloon descending from the sky that looked like it was about to land on the roof of the building where I work.

And who the hell gets to buzz around in a hot air balloon on a Wednesday morning?  I am extremely upset about the unfairness of it.  How was I supposed to know that my lifelong dream was to be a hot air balloon pilot?

Whatever.

I was driving along, singing off-key to the radio, and chewing gum.  I was (for once) having a good driving experience, even though I was going to work.

I was in a little town called Hygene. 

I remember thinking that it was too bad that this town was so expensive because I would love to live there.  It's so cute.  I wondered if there was a bar, because that would make it perfect.

And then I bit my tongue.

Again.

My voice went from badly singing the refrain from "Little Lion Man" on the radio (filling in the Fuck-word where the radio deleted it out) to howling like a little baby.

I felt something hit my lap with a little thump and bounce away.

"Holy shit, I just bit off my tongue!" I thought as I swerved back and forth across the road, narrowly missing a car coming the other way as I searched for the severed piece.

I would probably speak with a lisp for the rest of my life, and not be able to say the "L" sound anymore.  I wouldn't even be able to say my own name, it would be like, "Wah-rah" or something.  Can hospitals reattach tongues? Shit shit shit shit shit!

Oh.

My fingers wrapped around the gum on the floor that had fallen out of my mouth.

I stopped at the single intersection in town, pretending to be OK even though my mouth was throbbing.  Pretending seemed to work until I noticed the guy that sells coffee in a nearby parking lot was staring at me.  Probably because I had my tongue dangling limply out of my mouth with a bit of drool dripping off the end.

I gassed the car without looking, and almost ran into an SUV.

They had good reactions, though, and we didn't die.

Images of dismembered bunnies floating through my brain, the taste of blood in my mouth, I pulled into the parking lot at work without further incident.  I concentrated on keeping my tongue inside my mouth.

There are a bunch of prairie dogs and bunnies out in that field.  Those jerks who think they're so special, flying around when other people have to work.  Probably going to get the plague.

The hot air balloon I had seen earlier was descending in the field behind the parking lot, and I stopped to watch it after I got out of my car.  It wasn't pretty anymore.  It was annoying with its bright rainbow pattern.

Damn balloon distracted me.

Fucker.

I flipped it off before turning away, realizing too late that I had also just flipped off the security camera in the parking lot.



P.S. Yes, you're right.  The pictures of the balloon were taken on two separate occasions, because whoever that hot air balloon pilot is, he apparently gets to "ballon" just about every day, the damned showoff.