In a story exemplative of the incredible bravery of humankind, 27-year-old Lana Reese finally worked up the courage to tell her friend, Divya, that she had a piece of food in her teeth after staring at it for a full 45 minutes.
“It takes guts to do what I did,” Lana told reporters. “Granted, a lot of people probably saw the food in her teeth between when I noticed it and when I said something about it, but still! Not everyone is brave enough to put themselves out there like that.”
Sources suggest that no less than 12 people approached, spoke to, and open-mouthed laughed with Divya while said food was wedged between her two front teeth.
“Yeah, it was a whole ‘front teeth’ ordeal,” Lana admitted. “It would’ve been pretty hard not to say anything, actually. And 45 minutes was definitely pushing into ‘bad friend’ territory. But I did bite the bullet and tell her right before her crush walked by, and, really, isn’t that what matters?”
Lana tells reporters that although she’s content with what she did, she’s still nervous that Divya will blame her for having food in her teeth at all.
“I know it’s unreasonable,” Lana said. “But sometimes when someone tells me there’s food in my teeth, I’m so embarrassed that I kind of get mad at them. I just hope Divya doesn’t do that to me.”
Divya reports that while, no, she doesn’t blame Lana for the food being in her teeth in the first place, she does kind of blame her for waiting so long to say anything.
“She let me smile at so many people,” Divya told reporters. “Like, big, shit-eating grins. But no one’s perfect, I guess. And it’s true that she did help me remove the food before the girl I liked walked over, and that does count for something.”
Lana insists she had to consider how to approach the situation from all angles first.
“There’s so many ways to alert someone that there’s food in their teeth!” she said. “There’s the classic ‘You have a little something…’ while gesturing to your own teeth, or the more subtle art of sucking on your own tooth in hopes that your friend gets the hint, or even the ever-so-bold ‘Hey, there’s something in your teeth.’”
In the end, Lana chose none of these options, opting instead for the vastly unpreferable and off-putting choice of pointing, laughing, and saying, “Floss much, dweeb?”
“I panicked, okay?” she admitted sheepishly.
At press time, Lana had noticed that Divya’s shirt was actually on inside-out and backwards, but took so long to process this revelation that her friend had already left to go hangout with her crush before she was able to hype herself up to say anything.
