mouth guard blues

Hello.  It's been awhile, yes?  My personal life lately has been a little bit, shall we say, chaotic.  Having what almost amounts to full time derby hours, by the time you add up my commute, practice times, volunteer time, and promotion time (which is all the time), is actually fairly unhelpful when you are trying to deal with life and death situations, not to mention get dinner on the table.

I would like to tell you all about my world of Brownian motion, but instead I want to talk about my mouth guard.  I have chit chatted about the mouth before, and before anyone bothers to suggest it, yes, I probably do have an oral fixation.  Who doesn't?  Especially if you are prone to embarrassing yourself by accidentally throwing your mouth guard at people.


What?!  Like you've never done it.

Okay, so a mouth guard is this thermoplastic greebly thing that gathers up spit and then leaks it down your chin when you take it out to gossip while you are supposed to be stretching.  At the same time as feeling like the mouth guard is not nice, you try very hard to avoid having your mouth guard with the rest of the world because as unpleasant as a mouth guard is, the world is much nastier. 

To avoid having the mouth guard come in contact with the germy, dirty, disgusting world a number of strategies have been devised to keep the two separate.  Most people have a neat little case to put their mouth guard in for storage, which is good because they usually end up in the skate bag, a whole realm of olfactory horror unto itself.

While needing the mouth guard, it is often taken out when verbally communicating because ith maketh yuu thoundth like ah idiuth and nubudy knuwths whath yuur saything.  Much of the time you end up just holding the mouth guard, twiddling it around as nervous displacement activity while the coach starts to explain the latest torture endurance drill that her twisted genius has devised, or, my personal favorite, absentmindedly chewing on it.  Mouth guards make nice teethers for babies too.

For longer breaks, mouth guards can be parked any number of places on a person.  Poking an edge in a helmet hole is popular, though I've always found that this method makes small irritating lacerations in the guard.  Other people tuck them into elbow pads and bra straps.  Admittedly, the guard stands a pretty good chance of tasting distressingly salty when back in use, but, hey, we can always use extra electrolytes while practicing, yes? 

I, myself, am trying to become a bra strap parker.  In fact, I am expending a great deal of will to remind myself to put the mouth guard into the bra. 

Why? 

Well, it's because of a third way of dealing with a loose mouth guard: get a model with a little dummy string attached to it and tie it to your helmet.  When the guard is attached, then you can just spit it out and let it dangle down (leaving little drool marks across the boobs, but as you can tell, there are no perfect situations here.  Have I mentioned before how incredibly not-sexy derby is close up?) 

This tethered guard is what I had until about a month and a half ago, when I switched to a free standing model.  Unfortunately for me and everyone I play with, my brain has failed to register the change in mouth guard design.  I still believe, somehow, that if I pull my mouth guard out of my mouth and let go that the mouth guard will somehow miraculously suspend itself close by my person and not go plummeting to the floor, catching a bounce off a toe guard and ricocheting spit across various colourful and cleverly patterned knee socks.

Why can't I figure this out?  It's so simple: take mouth guard out, keep mouth guard in hand while transferring it to a secure place behind the straps of two sports bras.  Do not take mouth guard out and throw it at team mates skates, making a squishy little plelph noise when it bounces across the floor.  It's so frustrating!  I feel like I belong in some sort of derby remedial class.  I've learnt how to jump, on skates, while traveling fast and I still can't stop throwing my mouth guard at people!

Makes me think perhaps I should refrain from taking my mouth guard out at all during practice because even ifth I suund like a murun, at leth I wun't be thpitting un them.

Or go buy another mouth guard with a dummy string.  Because it seems that's exactly where I'm at right now.