Preface To Breath: Sad Reflections On Childhood

Do you remember when suddenly it became a big deal whether your breath smelled bad or not?  Did it have something to do with puberty?

I remember my sixth grade Social Studies teacher, Mr. Schwartz, was the first "close talker" I ever met. He would almost pull me to him to let me know something in confidence.  (Why he needed to confide in a twelve year old is another story.)  Mr. Schwartz's main problem was that he was most probably a three-pack-a-day smoker.  In those days, teachers would disappear in-between classes to puff down an entire cigarette in a five minute period.  & even though virtually every member of my family at that time smoked, I was astonished when he would come close to me, talk in low tones, & his breath smelled as bad as his teeth were yellow.

Being an ugly & fat child, I didn't get to play the boy-girl games of puberty & anyway I did my best to keep myself inconspicuous & out of trouble.  But I think it was some time in eighth grade when someone spat out that damning word for the first time in my life: halitosis.  It's a word that sounds as bad as it is.  It was probably in my Home Economics class (a class I took because at the end of the school year you learned how to make a pizza) when some of the more popular guys I sat next to complained of some dude who had halitosis.  They had discovered this fact not because they themselves noticed, but because a girl had complained about it when she kissed him.

I knew at that point I would never ever never kiss a girl.

Whether or not I myself had bad breath I couldn't say.  I didn't have cigarette breath, that was true.  But at the time I definitely didn't have terribly good dental hygiene, which is the easiest way to guarantee decent-smelling breath.  In my favor, however, was the fact that my family ate bland, white European food, with the most daring spice being salt, so I didn't smell of garlic or curry or anything like that.  But I drank a lot of soda, & ate a lot of crap junk food.  Chances are, I didn't have breath that smelled of posies.

None of it mattered, of course - I didn't have friends with whom I whispered all the time, & when I was finally able to communicate with the opposite sex, I would be talking to girls who weren't quite as shallow as the boys in my Home Ec class.

What they - or the boys in middle school, or even my friends - said about my breath behind my back is another thing entirely, & something I am not privy to.