cultural arts segment: how to tie a cherry stem in a knot with your tongue

This is the season for Christmas parties for work, school, family reunions, and whatever other reason people can concoct to have everybody over for dinner or those tiny little appetizers I can never spell the French word for. Here on fluent in mumble, I like to give my readers a variety of useful, culturally relevant subjects. This is one of those. It's only good at really boring or awkward dinners. Sometimes when everybody else has booze and you're sipping a Shirley Temple, it's nice to have a way to stand out besides your engaging conversational style. Take this as my gift to fellow teetotalers around the globe.

Here is my method to tie the stem of a Maraschino cherry in an overhand knot:

1. If possible choose a longer stem, especially if you are a beginner.
   
2. Be sure to practice before you actually try this at a dinner.
   
3. Plan for if you ignore step 2: If you are desperate to do this before you have mastered it, just get a drink with lots of cherries, discreetly tie one of the stems under the table in a believeable overhand knot and slip it in your mouth unnoticed. Wait a few minutes, then make a show of putting another straight stem in your mouth, contort your face a bit (be sure to give it enough time that people will believe you), then spit out your pre-knotted stem elegantly onto a spoon.
   
4. No, that wasn't the WHOLE plan. If you want to do it for real, the secret is that successful cherry-stem knotting involves as much teeth as tongue.
   
5. First, bend the stem into a "U" shape with your tongue - the ends up, the curve down, right around the gumline of your bottom front teeth. I forgot to mention that this post may be considered graphic by some readers. Proceed with the utmost caution.
   
6. Next, cross the arms of the U. Arm A over arm B, so arm A is nearer to your tongue and arm B is nearer to your teeth. Which is on which side doesn't matter.
   
7. Push arm A (the one near your tongue) over arm B and through your slightly opened teeth. Then hold the top of the resulting loop to your top teeth with your tongue while gently sucking the end of arm A through the loop.
   
8. Hook the end of arm A with your bottom teeth and pull it through by biting it gently and allowing the rest of the loop to be carried in the opposite direction by the movement of your lips.
   
9. Tighten. This can be accomplished by biting an end and moving the rest of the loop away from that anchor point. Be sure to tighten enough to make it secure, but leave it loose enough that people can tell it is an overhand knot. Just a bump in the middle of the stem is significantly less impressive.
   
10. Spit it out and impress people.
    
11. Leave a comment on my blog and let us all know how it went.