The Sexy Mouth Gaper

I have recently discovered it is impossible for me to keep my mouth closed for an extended period of time. Not in terms of talking (though I do tend to struggle with keeping my talking to a bare minimum), but in the actual act of keeping my lower lip hugging my upper lip. This might not seem like a serious issue, but boy oh boy is it. Can I tell you a ridiculously embarrassing story from my woeful Junior High years? Simply combining those two words, Junior and High could easily equal an embarrassing story for us all, however, I really tried to take it to the next level with my mouth gaping along with other attributes.

Attribute One: The purple rimmed oval shaped glasses that always slid low on my nose AND the mouth full of metal that caused me to gleek a lot when I spoke to other people. Definition of H.O.T

Attribute Two: The Hair. Living in KS during these angsty pre-teen years did not do me any favors. If Bellatrix Lestrange and Severus Snape had a child together, that would define my Junior High Hair. A brilliant combination of untamable frizz with some unforgiving greasy, straight as a board strands mixed in the bunch. I used to go into the girls bathroom, fill my cupped hands with as much water as possible, and pour it over my frizzy hair in hopes it would be tamed. Turns out putting water on your hair when it is dry just makes it more frizzy. Go figure

Attribute Three:  I was in Junior High Band. I really, really don’t need to say more.

Attribute Four: Nothing is quite as attractive as the ambiguous pillow shape adolescent bestows upon 13-year-old girls. Boy did I feel comfortable in that blobbish body shape. If only my hormones would allow me to experience that joyful time again…

Attribute Five: My absolute favorite part of the entire year and what I looked forward to with a frightening amount of excitement was the annual Washburn Rural Junior High Renaissance Faire. Looking back, I looked forward to this more than I did for Prom in High School

Attribute Six (The Mouth Gape): I had this idea that parted lips translated into one enticingly kissable mouth. Except for I didn’t slightly part my lips…I interpreted this idea that the more you open your mouth as you stroll along those locker lined hallways the sexier you get. Slightly parted= slightly sexy. Full mouth gape= full on sexy. Couple this brilliant idea with the lip gloss trend sweeping our tiny Junior High and you get sticky strands of metallic pink gloss lining the way to ultimate seduction. Once one of my teachers stopped my sex bomb self and asked me if I was having trouble breathing. I pretended I was and whipped out my trusty inhaler to calm his mistaken worries (Oh yeah, the missing attribute was that I had sports induced asthma in the big JH. I was so stereotypically nerdy it’s almost too much to bare)

The point of this post is not to poke fun at my poor little pre-teen self  but to bring to light how attribute six has not diminished as previously believed. Take for example yesterday while running on the treadmill. I was feeling dang good as I pranced along that never ending black strip and then I glanced at the mirror and almost cracked up at the girl in the corner of the room whose agape mouth was pretty much touching her collarbones. Then the realization sunk in. Cave Mouth Girl was ME. I usually don’t expect to look super fly when I am exercising, but I had no idea it was this bad. Other example. Today at work my co-worker was explaining something to me when I realized there was something wet sneaking along my cheek. Turns out it was saliva leaking out of my open trap. Words cannot accurately capture the shock of realizing this is probably why people feel the need to repeat instructions to me twice. Because my MOUTH IS OPEN ALL THE TIME and the drool just accents the visual signs of my intelligence. So if you see me sometime soon and my mouth is open, just put a mint chocolate truffle in there so I can feel like there is some benefit to having the incurable disease of mouthgapeiosis.