Dental Floss

How much dental floss is enough? The little spool of dental floss doesn’t tell you.

Why? What do they stand to gain by not sharing this knowledge with us?

Seriously, what other medicine can you buy at a pharmacy that doesn’t give you dosing instructions?

Well, apparently for dental floss, it’s up to the user’s discretion. Corporate Lawyers decided it’s just too dangerous to give general guidance here.

But, are we really ready for this responsibility? Of course we’re not. We could definitely use a little more guidance here.

The stakes are high. Take too little and you can’t get it to stay on your fingers. As you try to work it down through the gaps in your teeth, you can feel it slowly unspooling from your index finger.

Finally, it slips off and there you stand, drooling all over your fingers like the village idiot.

Don’t get too cocky, though, taking too much isn’t a great option either.

You spend five minutes winding and weaving it carefully over your fingers until the blood flow is cut off from your fingertips. Then you have to unwind the nasty smelling thread from your fingers when you’re done. Pleasant.

I think the best strategy is to figure out what style works best for you. Personally, I end up spooling out enough line to do the traverse on El Capitan.

Two to three yards feels sufficient. Better safe than sorry. And, I’d rather err on the heavy side than have pork chop stuck in these choppers, Baby.

And I was kidding about El Cap, I don’t even know if there is a traverse there. But if there is, and I’m on it, the gaps in my teeth will definitely be food particle free.