Life is scary. Especially if you are someone like me. Jewish. A Woman. A Person Who Thinks Deep Into Things. A coal miner of the brain, if you will. There are lots of things to be scared of. Accidents. Illnesses. My future. My career. Will someone love me so much that they want to marry me? What if on a whim on a Wednesday night I am on the way to get a haircut--just a modest trim because I am growing it long--but I think, “Screw it! What if I just get a short bob?” AND I GO THROUGH WITH IT AND THE NEXT DAY I CRY IN THE SHOWER BECAUSE IT VIOLATES THE GOAL I HAVE BEEN WORKING TOWARDS FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS? Will I ever get paid to do what I love? What if they discontinue the cranberry tuna salad at Whole Foods or what if I develop a food allergy that prevents me from eating something that brings me joy? And bad stuff that could happen to other people like a natural disaster or a car accident or someone calling another person a bad name and their feelings are hurt and they hold onto it and it makes them hate themself? What I’m trying to say is, everyday life involves lots of scary stuff. One scary thing that I did not mention is something that everyone has encountered at one time or another. It is a scary thing that effects millions of people every day; be it in their own lives, or in encounters with others who suffer from it. It is offensive. It makes lots of people uncomfortable. It is insidious. And no one ever wants to tell someone that they have it. But people talk about it behind peoples backs. I’m talking about bad breath.
Like wines or cereals, there are many variatals of bad breath. A very good friend of mine has bad breath from time to time (frequently). But his breath is more of a surface bad. It’s got a big bark but a gentle bite-- like a shihtszu or an insecure bitch. Like a thunderously loud fart that doesn’t smell. So like, one huff of his breath and you’re like GOD DAMN! But it’s nothing that couldn’t be remedied by a moderate gargle of Listerine. It has cheesy notes and a musty, dry, and hot essence to it. You know those shitty comforters your friend would have in her basement to use for sleepovers? The filling felt like cheap stuffed animal filling? That is what this kind of stank breath reminds me of. My Mom, on the other hand, god bless her, has bad breath that puts my friends bad breath to shame. Her bad breath has an ancient feeling to it. When I smell her bad breath I think of an Egyptian tomb, a sarcophagus being unoped for the first time ever. Her bad breath is ancestral. Her bad breath is what a ship sailing into Ellis Island after weeks at sea smelt like. The steerage level. But we’ll get to that later.
With such a wide disparity between my friend’s mild (bad as hell) breath and my Mom’s Bergen-Belsen morning breath, I thought I would create a spectrum, so when someone breathes into your face and you want to run away immediately you will have an easy way to describe to your friends what you experienced.
Stage One: Bad breath as a result of eating something bad or not drinking enough liquids to keep the mouth moist and smellin’ fresh. Common amongst Jewish people as a result of reckless consumption of strong foods, such as/not limited to: lox, onion, cream cheese, kugel, blintz, borsht, pickled herring, etc. Can be remedied with over the counter treatments such as: Listerine, Colgate, Trident, NOT ALTOIDS or TIC TACS, which make your breath worse. You need something with chemicals to defeat whatever is subletting your mouth and emanating foul filth.
Stage Two: An extreme case of Stage One. You were at stage one, and didn’t do anything about it because you were on a bus for 9 hours or you just don’t care about yourself or other people. Stage two is Desert breath, or, mouth odor resulting from dehydration, also known as cotton mouth. You need to drink a large amount of something and follow up with one of the over the counter treatments aforementioned.
Stage Three: The “what the fuck kind of person are you? I’ve had you pegged all wrong. I thought you were a decent person...” offensive breath. This kind of breath is experienced in quiet places, where one may need to enter another persons personal space to convey a message; a Six Inch Voice space, if you will. When the offender uses their six inch voice on you, you are taken aback. You want to stand 2 feet back and put your hand on your chest and say, “Oh, God.” Stage 3 breath may be a result of a combination of Stage One and Stage Two causes--anything from an onion bagel with tuna salad and a bag of Doritos an hour ago and a lack of liquid consumption and maybe something else too. You have an encounter with this person that reveals to you what kind of heat they’re pushing, and you feel like Nancy Drew needing to solve this case immediately. You ask yourself, “Are they a bad breath person? What did they eat today? Did I see them drink water?” And then you realize...you didn’t see her go to the bathroom to pee ONCE in the 3 hours you were together! And then you feel like Hailey Joel Osment with your powerful intuition and ability to put the facts together as you say in your head, “It all makes sense now! Of course this person WOULD have bad breath. Of course they would. It all makes sense now.” Stage 3 is also known as Temple Breath: the scent eminating from a Jew’s mouth in temple on Yom Kippur. They are davening, they are thirsty, they have NOT brushed their teeth, they are CHA-ing, saying Ba-RUCH over and over, bringing every cell in the body towards the front of the mouth, and they have not eaten anything. This breath is BAD, but it is as a result of very obvious reasons. The only acceptable place for Stage Three breath is at shul. If you are not at a place of Judaic worship and your breath is buzzing at a Stage Three, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Stage Four: This is the real deal. This is the worst kind of bad breath. Stage Four hits close to home. My own mother has Stage Four bad breath. This is the kind of breath that when you smell it, you see visions of your ancestors. You see tenements. You see tumbleweeds. You see Egyptian tombs. You see Regan in the Exorcist projectile vomiting while her head spins around. You see the scene in the beginning of Titanic when the guys bring up the safe that is supposed to contain the Heart of the Ocean diamond but they open it and it’s just the saddest brown orange sandy liquid you ever saw. When this breath is thrust upon you, every part of you is offended. You hear windows shatter, babies crying, freight trains announcing their passing. But mainly, you are afraid for what is rotting inside the body of this person. Because it smells like something is corroding deep within their body. This breath smells like it is coming from beyond the grave. Is this person dying? Are they possessed? Who do I need to call? This is serious. This breath can NOT be remedied by an OTC. A Listerine gargle would only merely mask the scent of the darkness that lurks within. This bad breath would LOL at the thought of Listerine. This is the Jennifer Hudson singing “I Am Telling You” of bad breaths. I first experienced this breath at a time when I wasn’t ready to articulate the discomfort I felt with it, or linguistically capable of analyzing and categorizing terrible smells. The first time I experienced Stage Four bad breath was approximately 3 years ago in a sylvan town just outside of New York City. I was at Trader Joe’s with my Mom, and I was checking out a bag of frozen peas, deciding whether to go with the Family Size Easy Zip burlap sack or just the regular size one, when my Mom leaned over my shoulder to see what was going on and said, “Whattaya lookin at honey?” And I, in horror, whipped my face in the opposite direction to take in a gulp of air that was free of the scent of carcass, and then whipped it back to let her know. “Mom, your breath stinks like shit!” She giggled in embarrassment, then accepted her diagnosis, then turned to horror and desperation as she said, “Oh no! What do I do?” The look on her face was of guilt--and I could tell she had been quietly harboring this Stage Four bad breath on her own. She had no one to turn to. She was too embaressed to admit to anyone what was going on. She was, in a word, ashamed. So I did what any loving daughter who wants the best for her adoring mother. I went to the source. I went to the text. I went to Google. I gathered some data based on extensive research, and I drafted out a plan of action on a legal pad. We went to the health food store. We went to the grocery store. We went to the pharmacy. We did it all. And you know what? Her breath is still bad in the morning before she brushes her teeth. She brushes her teeth AFTER coffee and breakfast. Which is like, GOOD FOR HER (AND “THEM”--the other people who engage in this barbaric practice) but for the rest of us, we suffer. Stage Four Breath is a chronic disease that affects over 10 million Americans in the United Stages. It can’t be cured, but it can be helped. Through the vigilant use of modern medicine and OTC treatments, it can be moderately subdued. Like Spanx. It can hold in those parts you don’t want people to see for a period of time, but...those parts cannot be tamed forever, and no one is wearing Spanx when they roll out of bed in the morning.
The moral of the story is, when you smell someone’s breath and it isn’t pleasing, TELL THEM. It is your duty as a citizen. Your job to make the world a better place. One bad breath call out at a time. 