It's one of those dreaded moments. One that exposes all our inadequacies and inconsistencies. The dentist, poking around your molars and bicuspids, simultaneously scrapes plaque and your conscience with the pointed question, "And have you been flossing everyday?"

Despite all the flavored, waxed, stringless improvements, despite all the high-tech, low-tech gadgets and gizmos, flossing is still an unloved and unlovely chore. Nobody likes to do it. Nobody likes to see it being done. And--dentists will look scandalized as they tell you--few of us do it with determined regularity. Thanks to corn-on-the-cob perhaps September is a higher-flossing month than most. But once we move into squishy squash October, flossing is easily forgotten. Flossing is never a labor of love. It's always just plain la…