Mouth breathing is a habit that forces me to shudder at my very core. There’s nothing more that I would like to do than to confront every slack-jawed individual I come across, and slap some sense into them. Or at the very least slap their mucus-laden sinuses free so they’ll engage in intra-nostril oxygen exchange. When I see a mouth breather, I can’t help but become fixated on their mouth, watching each inhale and exhale, envisioning the massive number of microscopic germs reproducing and festering like a cesspool. I study the white crust that has formed at the corners of their mouth and wonder how long they can stand to have it form there, all the while secretly wanting to take one of those tools masons use when building a brick wall to firmly scrape and remove the cement that has encrusted their mouth. Given my preexisting discrimination against mouth-breathers, it would be a no-brainer to assume I would never date one and I never had any intention of proving that assumption wrong. I began dating a guy who by all other accounts has his act together (at least in terms of most 20-something year olds), but the one trait that I just cannot look beyond is his mouth-breathing. At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt; he was just getting over a cold and I thought, “well maybe this is just the residual stuffy-nose.” I figured eventually, it would wear off and he would resume breathing normally. As the weeks have progressed, there is little sign that his mouth-breathing is just a temporary phenomenon. Instead, I catch myself staring at his mouth, examining each breath, almost as if I can see them like in a cartoon where the smelly kid is radiating stink lines. Each breath becomes like one of those silent elevator farts that everyone who is trapped in the confined space seems to notice, but no one is about to call anyone out on it. Instead, everyone holds their breath and braces for the doors to open.
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