(62) Rotten teeth contest

There was a sweet foul odor in the air for miles around. All kinds of people were heading happily for the flat fields outside of town. Among real June daisies and tiny wild strawberries, the banners were up and the birds chirped the early morning. This is the annual rotten teeth contest

There is much fierce competition and training for this event. Once your teeth are all gone, you may not enter as a contestant. As long as you still have a few, you may compete each year. The basic method consists of simply downright never brushing your teeth, or flossing. It is preferable never to brush your tongue either, as you Will see later.

The winning criteria are the natural occurrence, at sight, of the most repulsive-looking mouth in advanced tooth decay, gum and mouth diseases. Reekage and discoloration count a lot too. To achieve a result, the contestants go from one tent of a row of five to another. When done with all the examinations, everyone sits at a very long wooden table with refreshments, exchanging smiles and laughs all while waiting for the results. At the first tent, the color of your teeth is categorized.

There are prizes for the yellowish, brownish and blackest ones of all. At the second tent, it was the amount of hardened plaque visible on your gumline and visibly hardened between your teeth. The judges may use a dentist-like hook to pick it up a bit. There was a prize for the most disgustingly visible plaque accumulations. The third tent is for your gums. Any gum diseases, swollen abscesses and bleeding or cavitied gums are examined here.

There are prizes for the scariest ones at sight. The fourth tent is for the tongue examination. I told you it was important never to brush your tongue either. When you never do, it makes your breath even more disgusting for the breath sample, when a judge smells your mouth with your tongue sticking out.

You can imagine that there's a prize for the worst breath. In the fourth tent, they also take a floss sample, to liberate more of the rich rotten smell between the teeth. All the floss samples are kept in a bucket. Every year, a very experienced judge with a fine nose shakes it up with his bare hands, bends down and inhales deeply to smell if this year's bucket is more disgusting than last year's. It was going to be a busy day. A big feast waited at sunset like always.

The event sponsors hand out treats and there's lively music, accordion, guitars and flutes. Many old men play a wooden spoon. In the fifth tent, it is the general aspect of your mouth and visible decay that is evaluated. How bad it looks in all. The most frightening mouths and repulsive teeth and breaths are the only ones who stand a chance of winning anything at all.

This year's top prize went to two brothers, newcomers it seems, they weren't seen before. They were both afflicted at birth with an unusually large fissure of the mouth, reaching a deformed ear on each side of their head. If that wasn't impressive enough, all those extra teeth of theirs are particularly rotten. They are to be featured on the cover of "Rotten Mouth" magazine and get much publicity from the contest. The judges awarded them the special gold trophy in the shape of a rotten smile. From the sponsors, they got large amounts of sweets and other tooth decay-promoting goods.

Other prizes were awarded to the subcategories. The twelve most popular nominees feature on this year's event calendar. The festive supper was memorable. The next morning, the people headed back home with a bit more food stuck between their teeth. Starting next year, there will be an added feature to enlarge the gathering and share the fun. The movement is picking up momentum. We'll feature five other tents and another long wooden table for the simultaneous rotten denture contest, those that look very gross, cracked and full of rotten spit that smells bad a lot.

Nowadays, you must use what you have to the fullest. I'd rather be a heavyweight rotten teeth champion than be Six feet underground being nothing and having nothing.

Both contests are free for contestants and cost only five dollars for visitors. See you all next year, same time, same place!