mistake

When a person offers me a piece of gum, the correct answer is "no, thank you," even if I have the munchies and the gum smells good. I am excruciatingly aware of this at the moment. This is not a corollary of the traditonal Don't Take Candy From Strangers, as the person in question is my boss. Four out of five dentists (if not more) have made chewing gums with artificial sweetener so popular that they're now the default. There are a few sugared gums still being made, but gum being chewed by an adult is very, very, likely to have artificial sweetener. I doubt there is any official survey of dentists, for the question of what to chew when a person has a toothache recurring 6 weeks after having an infected root canal repaired. I expect there would be some kind of consensus around "don't chew gum at all, you idiot!"

Now I'm in a lot of pain, and I feel very stupid. My boss, of course, just wanted to chew gum while talking with me, and not be rude about it. *sigh*