The Risks of Opening Your Mouth

Here's a gross thing that happened...

Wait first let me explain what is in the top of Coop's mouth. Like so many pre-Tweens he endures the palate spreading device known in orthodontia as an expander. To parents like me, it's known as an expensive piece of metal with an interminably small keyhole placed precariously close to the soft roof of my precious child's, precious mouth. Each night I search for this infinitely small hole, then I fumble inside Cooper's mouth with a stick fitted with a pin on the end. The pin is actually a collapsible "key" that once in the hole is cranked toward the back of Cooper's mouth -- directly in line with his uvula -- in an effort to widen his mouth. It creates at once both a barrier and a small cavity in the top of his mouth. He now has a remarkable speech impediment, and can make horrible sounds and smells with the trapped air between his tongue, the metal contraption, and the roof of his mouth. 

While enjoying ourselves in the great outdoors, Coop had his beautiful mouth wide open. Perhaps he was shouting, maybe laughing, but some freaky Miller moth thought he was inviting him in. The moth flew in his mouth and then became trapped between the expander and the roof of his mouth. Fluttering and buzzing, and gagging Cooper completely out. 

If this had happened to me, I think I would have died. I base this on my reaction to the 100 Miller moths that attacked me when I freed them from the plastic house number they had hatched in. With one pop of a flathead screwdriver I unleashed a torrent of wings and freaky moth fuzz all over me. I screamed on the order of the utmost terror threat and began blindly waving my screwdriver, and arching back matrix style in an effort to escape danger. So yeah, if an effin' Miller moth flew in my mouth and then became trapped inside it, I would freak out, soil myself and just lay down and die. The heart would just explode. I would die.

Cooper just spit and kept playing.