What Lurks Behind the Overlooked Chin? Behind the Innocent Mouth?!

I've been moving my mouth alot lately. Too much. Many odd things have happened to my mouth I hope to recount on this blog. Here's one now. During one of my many openings, in the midst of a grilled cheese and artichoke dip suction cup episode of bacchinalian bliss, I tweaked something. That's how I described it at first. "Something feels wrong in my mouth," I spouted out. The words pushing their way towards the world between goopy lines of cheese forming like cobwebs in my mouth cave. "Now it feels like something is cutting me. Did I eat a piece of glass? Was there glass in my sandwich and dip?". I sent a finger into the hole to probe for any invaders and to then report back to me. The finger found nothing. Nothing in my mouth spoke of pain or suffering, or even tweaking. I was lost and the pain remained. It belonged to my face and it seemed related to my mouth. Not some distant second cousin; no, this pain was intimate. I pondered. I felt around some more. I scratched my chin. MOTHERFUCKER, MY CHIN HURTS.

This proclamation warped me into the land of pain-induced migraines and immobility. Chin-chin, hairy nub of nubs, why, oh why, have you forsaken me? After an hour of advil, babying courtesy of girlfriend, laying down, and finally, with the effort of non-thought, accepting the void that was now my life forever, I felt sorta relaxed. Then I slithered over to the computer, my chin thumping with such gruesome detail it may have been life-or-death open heart surgery. I googled something like "my mouth hurt but it was chin" and while the results were spare, I found my answer. Mandible. No, not edible men. No, not vague memories of Mankind doing some nasty shit to the mouths of his in-ring enemies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdJ8Toqy9z0. No, mandible, the bone forming the skull with the cranium. I don't care to know what that means too much, I just want to be able to say it. Mandibles can get tweaked and mandibles can fucking hurt. Or more precisely, the muscles that twist around my mandible, like a tangle of vines. The mentalis of my mandible. Scientific body shit. Since they connect your jaw, skull, brain, they are integral to the happiness of your mouth. Even chewing something as slurpy and lowly as melted cheese can mean the wrath of mandible. I don't know why the mandible had never attacked me in such a devastating fashion before. It had either been biding its time, or it had been attacking me all along and I had simply blamed food intake or my innocent hole and then moved on. Never again will I dismiss this deadly piece of bone.

You know, as I slowly returned to normal levels of pain and mouth movement, I wondered if maybe the mandible would lash out again. Maybe it would seal my mouth shut for good. Lockjaw. I would try to wedge a piece of leather in there as it was sealing shut. But the mandible would push past the leather, shearing it off, leaving a hunk of shoe-taste in my mouth. A piece of leather left there to dissolve like communion. The mandible, my newfound God, telling me that I will never open my mouth again. That I will be forced to breathe through my nose, forever recounting all the things that used to be in my mouth. Knowing that nothing would ever enter my mouth again. Waiting for the liquid food to slither into my body intravenously. Slurp slurp.

I fear you mighty mandible. I don't know what I need to do to appease your gruesome jaws but I will try to find out.