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When I was 9, a small-town dentist decided that I had a space between my teeth because the frenum — the soft tissue connecting the lips and gums — had grown in the way, so he cut it out.

"I had to remove one where the person swished them around in their mouth and they ended up on each side of the lingual frenum—the fleshy piece of tissue underneath our tongue," Kaplan said.

I forgot to close my mouth and ripped my frenum but no real damage.

She pushed my tongue up and sliced the frenum.

I used to curl up my tongue in front of the mirror and tauten my frenum into a white line, itself as thin as a razor blade.