Rinse, Rinse, and Re-rinse

The way that the Act Fluoride rinse works is that when pressure is exerted on the bottle, suction is created in the siphon tube that draws up the rinse to an opening at the top that holds the rinse. So, my trip in Cincinnati started at some 480 feet. Well, one should expect that the pressure decreases the higher you get, and it surely has. However, when traveling through Wyoming, I reached an elevation of just over 6,600 feet. At the Utah border, and continuing through to the Salt Lake Valley, you descend quite rapidly (it was a fun ride) until you finally reach Provo which is about 3,700 feet. For the mathematically challenged, that means the pressure on my bottle of fluoride rinse decreased significantly to the tune of more than 6,000 feet elevation change from Cincinnati to Wyoming, but then suddenly (and it was like a 6% downgrade for about 45 minutes) increased when I got into Utah.

None of this was on the forefront of my mind and so I unscrewed the lid on the rinse and the bottle immediately started to fill itself. Like the librarian on the Last Crusade that put the stamp down to look at it when it did something peculiar, I put the bottle down and watched in surprise as the bottle filled itself. What followed next was a bit of a flurry of activity. The bottle didn't stop. Alarmed, I picked the bottle up and held it over the sink. The bottle overflowing, I quickly tried to think of a way to stop the bottle. The stingy part of me (likely inherited from my father) didn't want to waste a single bit of the rinse. So without another thought, I put my mouth over the bottle to try and stop it. In hind sight, this clearly is not a clever idea, but in the heat of battle, one rarely has time to weigh the consequences. The Fluoride rinse continued to fill as if my mouth had no effect. My mouth began to fill with the rinse. My immediate thought was, "this is definitely more than the recommended usage." When my mouth couldn't contain any more, the red rinse leaked from the corners of my mouth. I'm quite sure if anyone had walked in on this scene they would probably just have closed the door and leave me to my privacy. Finally, to my cheeks great relief, the bottle acclimated to the pressure and stopped filling.

Flabbergasted, but completely alone in my apartment, I simply swooshed the insane amount of rinse that was in my mouth as if nothing happened and went to bed. I awoke the next morning thinking this must have been a dream that I had in the night. I went to the bathroom, saw the bottle half empty, smiled, and went to the days work. I skipped the rinse the next night, just for good measure.