A Commentary From Mrs. Hilbilly Momadomma

You know how sometimes, you have that rogue tastebud that decides to become all angry and militant and rise up above the surface of your tongue, throbbing and wreaking havoc on the tasteful neutrality of your mouth? I hate it when that happens.

Thank the Gummi Mary, I do not have a throbby tastebud.

You know how sometimes, like when you eat popcorn at the theater, and by theater, I mean the local AMC four-plex, not the facility you enter after buying scalped Pagliacci tickets from a Humpty-Dumpty with a melon head in an ill-fitting tux...you have the husk of a kernel stuck way back down in your throat, on the back of your tongue, where it curves down like a waterfall of papillaed muscle toward your esophagus?

I have not been to the theater, or eaten popcorn.

But I DID have a feeling in the back of my tongue-throat like that. A phantom husk, as it were. Right where you think you can reach your finger down in there, perhaps gag a few times, and scrape out the offending intruder with a fingernail. It started Friday night. I thought I just had a piece of tortilla chip stuck there, and it would wash on down after several sips of water. It did not. It was still there Saturday morning.

I was on the way to town when I noticed that grainy irritation again. On the way down the gravel road in T-Hoe, to be precise. I thought of sticking my finger down there to solve the problem, but I had just dipped some food for the cats out of the small lidded wastebasket in the garage with an old nonstick saucepan. Our cats eat a lot. Not just the fat one. So I didn't want my catfood hands to dig into the mucous membrane of my tongue-back. I leaned over towards the rearview mirror, and stuck my tongue way out. Not Gene Simmons' distance, but pretty far. Just for something to do. It's not like I had a pair of hot dog tongs or giant tweezers to wrench out the foreign object.

ON THE BACK OF MY TONGUE WERE THREE PAPILLA PILLARS!

Yeah. They were rear tastebuds, I assume. And they were not painful. But they were all stand-uppy and red, like a few Stonehenge specimens, only not made of stone, and redder. So it felt like I had something stuck there, but what was stuck were my own irritated tastebuds.

They have calmed down somewhat today. But I just wanted to let you know, because, in the same vein as all that glitters is not gold...all that irritates your tongue-throat is not a wayward popcorn kernel husk.