#1601 – Splintered
Posted on August 7, 2012 at 12:00 am by Chris
Chapter: Comics
When I was a kid I didn’t understand the “picking teeth” use of toothpicks. They were cool for sticking into cubes of cheese. The were cool as swords for play doh figures. The mint flavored ones at restaurants were fun to suck on. But when I tried to mimic picking my teeth like I saw adults doing I would just stab my gums or tongue.
Tags: splinter, toothpick, tweezers
I didn’t understand that when I was a kid either. I only thought that picking your teeth was something you’d do to show everyone that you just ate something, and nothing more useful than that. I guess I didn’t get shards of popcorn kernels stuck between my teeth until I was a bit older (or maybe I just didn’t care when I was a kid).
Guess what I’m using toothpicks for most often nowadays? …As a little tool for the small details when I’m sculpting with Fimo clay! They’re incredibly useful for that!
Other uses for picks of tooth:
Poking recessed Reset/ACL buttons on certain electronics, if the hole isn’t too small.
Making Bucky-like sculptures when you soak dried peas long enough to be poked into with a toothpick, firm, but not mushy. Let it dry and the peas will shrink into solid joins for the picks. Build you a model molecule with green atoms!
Of course, the ones with the cellophane fringes make great blow gun darts.
Short javelins for GI Joes.
But you can’t use a toothpick for getting a metal splinter out of your skin. It just don’t work that way.