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| Alien 1979: "In space, no one can hear you scream". In any competition involving teeth, Korea wins every time |
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190211000920&ACE_SEARCH=1
It is hard to believe that 30 years have already passed since South Korea boldly hosted the summer Olympics of 1988. These games would go down in history as the event which proudly launched the Korean sport of Oral Hygiene (OH) into the global arena for the very first time. Viewers around the world sat speechless as the host nation carried away every gold, silver and bronze medal, effortlessly beating all foreign competition in every single OH event.
First up was the eye-wateringly fast 15-Second Power-Brush Dash; ideal just before kissing and caressing or just after a secret cigarette. Then came the precision events such as the Single-handed Interdental Floss. These demonstrated skills patiently perfected over centuries into a near art form by Korean Buddhist Masters to remove their main diet of leafy greens from between their rear molars. There were also an impresssive range of endurance events such as the Double-Handed Foam Marathon. This showed us for the first time how two beads of toothpaste can be whipped up into an entire mouthfull of foam, with all the uncompromising firmness of a Korean mattress, in just under 20 minutes. Of course the reasons for creating this foam still remain as opaque as, well, the foam itself really. In any case, with these unique and admittedly imaginative skills, South Korea instantly positioned itself at the cleaning edge of global Oral Hygiene. The rest of the world would have to brush up and catch up.
From such unlikely beginnings, Korea's great Heroes of '88 were instantly immortalized as their as Oral Hygiene routines soon became ritual and are now observed in daily life with the same discipline one would expect of any finely-honed military unit. Official advice is to strictly follow the 3-3-3 concept, that is; to brush 3 times per day, for 3 minutes each time, within 3 minutes of eating food. Yes. Seriously. Within 3 minutes of eating food.
https://journals.lww.com/md-journal/fulltext/2017/02170/Association_between_oral_health_behavior_and.62.aspx
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| Sharing is caring: brush together |
Lunchtimes for office-dwellers are therefore characterised by fast and furious food around noon, then by a sharp sprint to the washroom armed with brushes, pastes and any number of the latest accessories. Of course the number of sinks are limited so an orderly queue is observed, with obvious deference to seniors who can slip in front of juniors any time, at their leisure.
Guys in a hurry can at least use an additional evolutionary advantage to jump the queues; they can brush their teeth while standing at the urinals. Given a little practice with a well-disciplined Trouser Snake, one can urinate quite deftly while brushing one's teeth with one hand and posting on Facebook with the other hand. Those who eat a larger lunch take their brushes and mobiles into the cubicles to somehow combine their ablutions and social media updates at a more relaxed pace while seated. It is little wonder that recent studies showed 18 times more bacteria on the average smart phone than on the average toilet flush handle.
http://time.com/4908654/cell-phone-bacteria/
None of this means that Oral Hygiene is in any way limited to mere tooth brushing. Frenzied brushing of the teeth in proscribed sets of horizontal, vertical and orbital motions, is merely a cunning warm-up to flex the finger muscles required for the more demanding tasks to follow. The first of these is the slow, methodical root-to-tip pressure-scrubbing of the top surface of the fully extended tongue. It amounts to scouring your most sensitive erogenous zone in front of the mirror in public.
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| Tongue-scrubbing |
Next follows the vigorous up-down scraping of the inside walls of the cheeks, which gives the impression of a large, trapped insect trying to claw its way out from inside the mouth. Finally comes a complete brush down of the entire roof of the mouth. The first time you see this you cannot help wonder if the person is trying to hook the base of their brain so they can pull it out via the soft palate.
Evidently none of the above are effective unless followed by a complete ensemble of deep throat gargling, three intense mouth-rinse cycles and finally hacking up phlem from the deepest, darkest reaches of the trachea. All of these are accompanied by their own personal combination of gutteral grunts, groans and roars which are normally only heard from moody Scots at Wimbledon.
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| Game, set and match |
