A few weeks ago, I arrived at my family's house just in time for a friendly local winter storm. Now by almost anyone's measure, it was admittedly a small and tame storm: three or four inches of snow, with almost no ice. Of course all the meteorological soothsaying in the world will do no good when you need to pull out of a driveway shaped like a skating ramp that opens up to a state highway.
Well, the afternoon after the snowfall, I had to get out of the house. Not because I had cabin fever or anything, but because I had to drive a little over a mile to get to where my laptop could pick up a free, public WiFi signal. Apparently internet access is just too great of a luxury to have at home.
I brushed off my car, started it to warm up the engine, and when it was ready, I grabbed my computer and jumped in. Usually getting up the relatively short driveway is no problem, but just a week prior, my mother broke a sideview mirror off her car when she hit black ice on the way up and the car slid back down and hit a fencepost on the way. Needless to say, I felt the need to be a bit more cautious than usual.
The car performed admirably, and I did not break anything off of it by being too close to the fence. In fact, the car did not even momentarily slip on the melted snow which was quickly refreezing as ice. At that moment though, I had a revelation.
I was summiting the crest of the hill, passing the slippery part and quickly approaching the open road, when I realized that I was ferociously biting my lower lip. My teeth were clenched in an apprehensive and anxious fashion, while my lip was pinned down and to the side. At that moment, cresting the hill with a firm clench of my lower lip, I discovered an alternative explanation for the origin of the White Man Overbite.
For those who do not know, the White Man Overbite is a phenomenon in which one bites his own lower lip, usually out of excitement, but often also out of fear or apprehension. It is most often observed when a white man is operating a motor vehicle and his favorite song comes on the radio, which itself usually contains a stellar guitar riff.
Because of the Overbite's usual association with rock music, I had always assumed that it was no more than a visceral reaction to face-melting electric guitar, and I analyzed it no further. While this still may be true, my experience summiting the icy driveway gave me an alternative explanation for the origin of this great phenomenon.
In reality, the White Man Overbite may be traceable to the white dudes of yore, who often needed to summit slippery slopes in vehicles in which they had little confidence. Today, that would be an old car (as was the case for me). Before that, however, it may have been a horseless carriage or streetcar, and before that, a horse and either a carriage or sleigh. Sitting in my old car, I could imagine a man in a much older mode of transportation facing a similar or even greater challenge, and overbiting in the exact same way. While my experience in the car happened in 2013, comparable experiences may have been had centuries before the dawn of rock music, making the Icy Hill Overbite much older than the now-famous This-Is-My-Song! Overbite.
Perhaps we will never know the true origin of the White Man Overbite. Was it first created by old man braving a treacherous mountain pass with horse and carriage? Or was it first sported by a dude losing his mind hearing the last two minutes and twenty-five seconds of Stairway to Heaven? The world may never know for sure. What I do know, however, is that that trusty little overbite helped me out of the driveway that fateful day, and for that I am eternally grateful.
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