How I Died Last Time

…and some ways it manifests now.

“Why do you talk like that?”

The question took me by surprise & I wasn’t sure what he meant.

“With your jaw clenched,” he said.

He held a muffin from craft services in one hand and gestured toward his own jaw with his other. “You barely open your mouth.”

Nonplussed, I told him all I knew.

“It’s always been like that, my jaw,” I answered him. Crew members turned to look as I said, “I can only open it this wide.”

To demonstrate, I opened my mouth as wide as I could and struggled to insert my two left forefingers, pointed like the barrel of a gun between my teeth.

“May I?” he’d set the muffin down and his own fingers, also pointed like the barrel of a gun, were poised several inches from my face.

Of course I acquiesced.

We were filming a cooking show with a celebrity chef, on location in a Korean grocery store.

The man asking to put his fingers in my mouth was a producer. I was just a production assistant — a glorified day laborer. There were people around, and I didn’t want to embarrass him. That’s why I opened my mouth for him when he asked me to.