Things that deserve the stink-eye:

Not exactly bubblegum.
Image from here.

I remembered. It has to do with my son.

When my son was a toddler the grown ups were drinking discoursing in the other room when suddenly we heard him scream. Not the regular I'm-a-superhero-wannabe scream or even the I-rarely-ever-play-with-that-anymore-but-hey-neighbour-kid-now-that-you're-enjoying-it-I-want-to-play-with-it-again-because-IT'S-MINE scream. This was the real thing.

We ran down the hall to his room and discovered him with a mouth full of blood. Oh great, I thought, he knocked out a tooth. (We had already been through this with his older sister.) So we asked him to show us his teeth. He stopped bawling and complied. All teeth were accounted for. Hmm. My wife gently felt around his mouth but nothing seemed to be bleeding on the outside. All his teeth were intact and his lips weren't bleeding so where was all the blood coming from? And then my wife asked him to stick out his tongue.

Whoa.

I don't remember much after that except thinking HOSPITAL NOW HOSPITAL NOW. The image is, however, microwaved into my brain. It was like someone had unzipped his tongue and thus he had two mini-tongues, or one tongue split down the middle.

Cut to the doctor. He did not recommend stitches. He said it would heal on it's own. You're shitting me, I thought, He's ruined. What future could he possibly have now? Reality TV?

But it did. It healed. Overnight.

Whoa again.

He has a scar now. (A little Harry Potter-like but without the British accent.) No long-term damage.

But it still disturbs me. I've always felt that most tongues I've seen, in fact all tongues, are generally disturbing. Because let's face it, tongues are odd. By odd I mean ugly. Seriously ugly. Like raw meat ugly. Musician John Mayer may have crafted a memorable song with his mention of her "bubble gum tongue," but in reality, no one, NO ONE wants to look at your tongue. Okay, maybe the doctor. But likely not her either.

Now this brings me to the most disturbing thing about my aversion to tongues. As some grinputters noted in this post, DO NOT GOOGLE TONGUE INFORMATION. DO NOT. Especially this.