Because I am afraid of mouthguards and will not wear one with beneficial regularity, I'm told my only option is Botox injections in the jaw to loosen the muscles.
Yikes! I'm not sure what my views on Botox at this point in my life should be -- I'm both depressed and intrigued at the prospect. On one hand, it's obviously depressing that I now need toxins injected into my face to prevent it from crumpling. But on the other, I have heard that Botox used as a preventative measure is more effective than waiting until after the collapse of one’s face and then attempting to put it back together using pulleys, wind-tunnels and staples or whatever they do.
After all, I don’t want to turn into “the Joker.” Shudder. That’s the nickname I gave once to a super old cougar wannabe with whom I got into a scuffle at Miami airport last New Year’s... We were all trying to fly standby to get home, and obviously seats on flights out of a cruise-ship port city after the holiday break are few and far between.
Anyway, this lady was the most hideous person I’ve ever laid eyes on (and I've seen Donald Trump in passing). She was dressed in all black, and all spandex. As a former volleyball player, my experience with spandex teaches that it was designed as a compression material – yet this woman’s garments somehow hung loosely from her deliberately emaciated frame.
She had dry peroxide blonde hair with visible brown roots styled into a bizarre feathered mullet. Her face looked like it had been segmented off and handed to an army of ants or other small industrious creatures who then scattered in different directions, pulling her skin taut like a tent-covering for an outdoor wedding.
Her face was stretched so tightly that the corners of her mouth were forced into a wry half-smile, like the one painted on the face of Heath Ledger's Joker character. I remember muttering under my breath, "Why so serious?" then laughing nastily to myself.
Most annoyingly, even though she was obviously not working a flight and was just trying to get home from a personal vacation like everyone else, she was wearing an “AA Crew" badge hanging from a jeweled lanyard around her bony, wrinkly, decrepit neck.
That neck! The telltale sign of aging that no amount of plastic surgery can hide. She looked like Nicole Richie from shoulders down, Madonna in the face, and the Lorax at the neck.
She was obviously trying to get the inside track on seats available for different flights by flirting with the gate agents, eating some Twizzler’s candy in what I’m sure she must have thought was a seductive manner. Watching her feed was like tuning in to a nature show on NatGeo. I remember watching her fumble with a twist of licorice in her clawed, leathery hands, then force it through her barely open, Restylane-filled lips in one swift motion.
So anyway, this brings me back to my original point of worrying that I will turn into the Joker whether or not I allow my Botox intervention to commence. It was pretty plain that the original Joker was only able to consume food sufficiently narrow and cylindrical such that she could slither it down her esophagus while moving nary a facial muscle.
If I don’t take care of my jaw problems soon, I’m no longer going to be able to chew, which might leave me potentially even worse off. Eeek! What should I do?
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