Have An Oreo Tomorrow, But Call Your Dentist

by Kevin Burton

    You will perhaps see a contradiction here, but show some moderation, show some discipline. Open your mind as you open your mouth.

    I’m letting you know a day ahead of time, I’ve got your back.

   Tomorrow is National Oreo Cookie Day. I have written about Oreos before (“The 110^th Anniversary Of The Oreo Cookie,” March -12-2022). But tomorrow is also National Dentist Day.

   The fact that I was all over the Oreo anniversary but Dentist Day escaped my notice three years ago should not surprise you. I know it doesn’t surprise my wife.

   Hey, did you know that ancient Sumerians believed tooth decay and cavities were caused by tooth worms? Says so on nationaltoday.com.

   The website also says that Oreo cookies were first introduced as kosher and that the original recipe called for pork fat. Not sure how both could be true.

   Here’s some friendly and free advice to you, tooth worms or no: do not put off your regular visits to the dentist until you are feeling medium-to-intense pain, as is the habit of certain Midwest-based visually-impaired, beep-baseball-playing, songwriting bloggers who shall go unnamed.

   You like eating?  Teeth help with eating, yes?  So why not Dentist Day?

   Or since Page 7 is such an idiom-friendly place, how about this?

   The Free Dictionary says the saying  “sink one’s teeth into” means “to start doing something or become involved in something with one’s utmost  energy, determination or enthusiasm.”

   Now think of pizza. What is your level of enthusiasm for pizza?  Pretty high if you are like most people. Well, we sink our teeth into pizza in the idiomatic sense and the literal sense.

   By invoking Oreo cookies and pizza, I am bringing out the heaviest of artillery in trying to sell perhaps the least sexy national day ever to grace these electronic pages.

   “March 6 is National Dentist Day, a day to celebrate the men and women who keep our chompers chomping, our gnashers gnashing, and our whites pearly,” reads the post on nationaltoday.com.

   As it turns out, and just so you know, dentists do not make housecalls. You have to intentionally go to them.

   Two of the things you’re supposed to do on National Dentist Day, brush your teeth, make a dentist’s appointment. No fake.

   But as for National Oreo Day, that’s a much easier sell. Now there’s a day we can sink our..….yeah OK, we’ve covered that.

   This is a double-tough ask for a blogger. You’re not buying Dentist day and chances are, you already know everything there is to know about Oreos. What to do?

    So I took to my search engines to look for new varieties of Oreos, looking for news you can use.

   Part of me rebelled of course. When I was young there was one Oreo cookie and we liked it, a lot. Two black crunchy cookies with a layer of white cream in between. My classmates and I had to march through blizzards to get them, struggling uphill to the store, then uphill back home.

   It wasn’t easy, but we were thankful.

   Only a fool at school lunchtime, would trade those precious, delicious and hard to get Oreos for a little box of raisins.

   I don’t know that we need 14,614 kinds of Oreos. Classic Oreos took us a long way in the 70s. But these kids today….

   I was just about ready to put the considerable full force of my sarcasm behind trashing this Oreo product inflation, when I stumbled upon something that stopped me in my tracks.

    Java Chip Oreos. Java chip….Oreos!

    Look, if you knew about Java Chip Oreos and didn’t tell your old blogging buddy, after all the 70s rock and roll knowledge I’ve laid on you, well I’m going to forgive you. But is this legit? Is it fake news? Java Chip Oreos? I’ve got to know for sure.

   So I’m on the Oreo website looking for the real scoop, and there’s a button that says, “accept all cookies.”

   Well I’m like, hell yes! Java Chip baby!

   But then my nagging hesitation; this is the kind of thing that could get me in trouble with the Dentist Day enthusiasts.

   I travel three yards from my office to the living room where Jeannette is perched in her favorite chair. I let her know there just might be a thing called Java Chip Oreos.

   I’m excited now because her thumbs got to going on that phone of hers. she can find anything.

   She tells me later that our neighborhood Wal-Mart had Java Chip Oreos, on the shelf!

   I let her know that it was necessary, that we go to the neighborhood Wal-Mart, tomorrow, to get my mother some green grapes. Oh how she loves those green grapes. Thinking of you Mom!

   “We have grapes,” Jeannette said

   “But they’re not green,’ I said thinking quickly. Maybe she bought that smokescreen, maybe she didn’t. But anyway she sauntered off.

   After she went to bed, I quickly and quietly, threw out about 15 cans of vegetables and several packets of side-dish rice. You know, Spanish rice, chicken broccoli, butter and herb, the kind of stuff you get from the Knorr company.

   Yeah, I threw out all that crap to make room in the pantry for the Oreos I planned to get.

   May God help any Wal-Mart shopper who gets in between me and those cookies. Dentist Day, take the hindmost.