Keep Calm and Mind Your Holes

The Holy Whole of Humanity’s Holey Existence

Original artwork by the author

Lately I’ve begun scraping my tongue. On purpose. I even bought a little metal wishbone-looking tool for the purpose. Ideally, it’s another good habit to add to my (really quite remarkable, considering where I was 3 years ago) repertoire of habits. But I’m not doing it every day. Honestly, I don’t even floss every day, though that’s certainly one of my goals.

I’m autistic and, I’m coming to realize, a person who has ADHD. That’s probably why I’ve had a tendency to wander off in the middle of my ideal oral care routine — I get started brushing my teeth and something akin to “look! a squirrel!” occurs after about two minutes.

It helps me stay focused if I watch a few reels on social media while I’m doing the whole floss/scrape/oil pull/brush/gargle rigamarole, and that’s how I came to be watching Toni Nagy recount her recent experiences as I was cleansing my mouth hole.

Does anyone else feel exceptionally tired right now? Also the desire to eat overtakes you, yet the…

It occurred to me then: as humans, we spend extraordinary amounts of time dealing with our various bodily openings.

A Series of Tubes

It’s one of those things that’s so obvious we don’t often think of the truth of it. Almost without exception, the first thing we do when we wake up is to tend to one or more of our holes — we pee, we blow our nose, we drink some water, etc.

Then we begin our day of hole-tending.

Coffee? A breakfast burrito? Into the mouth hole!

Wanna find out what’s happening outside your domain and your dome? Go to the places where you feed your eye and ear holes!

All the while, your nose hole is functioning to bring in oxygen and release carbon dioxide. Nice involuntary trick for a simple hole, right?

No matter who you are, no matter what you think you’re doing with your life, you’re really a hole-tender beneath it all.

Openings Galore