Story time!

Last December a young woman came to visit me and she had terrible breath. I mean it was just awful, awful breath.

I'll give a little background. I use a language learning app called Tandem. Sometimes I make friends on the app and they come to visit me. This girl is from Italy. I am American but I live in Spain. I've "known" this girl since 2017, so we know each other pretty well, but our first time meeting in person was when she visited me in December 2019.

I first noticed her breath when I picked her up at the train station. I didn't know it was her breath, but there was a very distinct bad breath smell. I thought it was coming from a random person, because she wasn't that close to me.

Then we took a train to another station, and the bad breath was still there. And then we got to my house, and it was still there. The point is that it took me a while to really confirm that it was her breath.

For several days I struggled with myself because I knew that I had to tell this girl that her breath was terrible but I really didn't want to. It was one of those situations where you know that you have to do the right thing despite it being uncomfortable.

I am certain the problem is that she doesn't floss her teeth. If ever you've gone a long period without flossing your teeth, and then you floss, you know that smell? That is how her breath smelled. My goal was to tell this young woman that she needed to begin flossing her teeth.

It was bad enough that I couldn't stand when her face was close to my face. I disliked it when we cuddled. She kept asking questions like, "Why do you keep your face so far away from mine? Are you afraid that I will kiss you?"

Eventually she started getting comfortable enough with me to start doing annoying things like tickle me while I was doing homework. I kept having to physically restrain her, and she kept going, so I picked her up and took her to my bedroom and I threw her down on the bed and I told her to stop tickling me. And she refused to stop. So I got mad enough that I told her right then and there that she had bad breath.

Her reaction was that it was an incredibly rude thing to say and she was offended. But that didn't phase me. I just kept going. I gave her a box of dental floss and I told her, "Look, you really do have bad breath. It's because you don't floss. I am giving you this floss. I would like for you to start flossing."

She rejected the idea. She said that her dentist is the best dentist in her region of Italy and he said that she has good teeth. I believe her story, I believe that her dentist told her that she has good teeth but I personally have never had a dentist tell me that my floss usage is sufficient.

Another detail is that she did an Au Pair in the UK last year and the mother of the house hated her for some mysterious reason. Au Pair is this thing for young people in Europe where you go to a foreign country and work as a nanny for a random family for a year. At first I thought the lady was just a piece of shit human being who dislikes you for no reason - there's no shortage of those people - but now I'm convinced she was mean to this girl because of her breath.

Anyway, I haven't seen her since she went back home so I don't know if she started flossing or not. But I told her that she had bad breath, and I feel better than I would otherwise have felt if I wouldn't have told her.