If you let him, H.E. can go on and on about how beautiful and bright-eyed I look. But he loves me … so is in no way objective.

Because—honestly?—half the time, awake or asleep, I look like a slack-jawed nitwit.

If I am lost in thought, in a movie, or in a book, my jaw has a tendency to go slack. It simply drops, and my mouth hangs open as I relax. It’s something often seen in kids as they’re watching cartoons, their eyes agog on the screen, their mouths in that “Whoaw…” position, saliva dripping from the corner.

Not that I drool, but I do that Whoaw thing if I am focused intensely on something other than the real world or myself, and I look like a four-year-old watching cartoons.

There have been times when I’d hear the words “Close your mouth, April” completely out of the blue, and I know I’ve been doing it again. Sometimes, people will go so far as to place their finger underneath my chin and snap my mouth closed for me, warning me about the flies that I might inhale.

It’s why I’m in no rush to get myself a web cam—I am often slack-jawed as I read at the computer, and I can imagine screenshots of me circulating on the net, with the caption “Duh!” underneath each one.

A lot of the time, I manage to stay aware of my jaw, and I somehow keep it closed, though the mouth remains slightly open in its relaxed state, my top two front teeth showing a little between my lips. I can’t help it. Unless I’m pouting, it takes effort to keep my lips closed, with a tight seal between the top and the bottom lips.

I once had a co-worker who, after watching a photoshoot of a female DJ, declared to me that women must know how sexy they look when they leave their mouths slightly open. I had to roll my eyes at him because he said it in the same way some men say, “Women who dress like that are just asking for it.”

As if I would leave my mouth open on purpose? Sure, when other women have their mouths slightly open, they’re being sexy. Me, I’m a slack-jawed nitwit with a mouth that won’t stay closed without constant effort on my part. There’s really nothing sexy about it, and the irony is that the more my mind is engaged, the more I look as if my mind were blank.

I’m sorry, but I spend half my life trying not to look like an idiot, and I just had to get that off my chest. Small note? My jaw hurts a little from constantly snapping it shut as I wrote this.

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