Toothbrushes and Other Stuff

For those of you who swing by here now and then, I want to thank you for your faithfulness and diligence. I apologize for the wear and tear you are putting on your clicking fingers every time you surf your way to this blog, only to see the same old comments. Here’s a disclaimer, though: I am not liable for any damage your surfing may have caused. Just don’t press the button so hard next time.

What a summer! Have we had a summer? We’re just barely wringing ourselves out of spring around here! This morning, at 10:19 a.m., the temperature was 59 degrees. What’s that about? Where is this global warming everyone is so terrorized about? Or are we launching into an ice age? (I’ve actually heard that.) So, be prepared for the news report about the blizzard that hit southeast Iowa in the middle of July!

Meanwhile, in order to intermittently reinforce your mouse-clicking behavior (like pulling the lever on the slot machine), I’m going to award you with the jackpot of another blog!

This one is adapted from something I wrote a few years ago — so the state of heretofore-referenced toothbrush technology has advanced even further — just so you don’t think that I am just discovering spin toothbrushes all of a sudden. This would mean that I’d have had to use the same toothbrush for the last several years — and I’m not talking about the same kind of toothbrush, but the same exact toothbrush. A dentist’s nightmare. Or maybe it would be a dentist’s dream!

Here goes:

Have you tried to buy a toothbrush lately? I hope so, be’cause dentists say you’re supposed to replace them every three months. I’ll bet you go out and get one like clockwork — doesn’t everybody? What’s that, you say? New toothbrush every three months? Wow! I wish someone had told me that six years ago! I now change my Polident every three weeks!

When I was a youngster, I used the same toothbrush for eons. I remember one of them: it was yellow with black bristles. Of course, the black bristles might not originally have been black — it could be they’d turned black after being used for so long.

My younger brother Brian says that my elder brother Gene and I taught him how to brush his teeth really fast, and his friends who see him brush his teeth (how intimate!) think it’s hilarious. I don’t think I brush my teeth with any Olympic speed, nor did anyone in dormitory bathroom situations ever comment on my tooth-brushing prowess, so I’m figuring kudos for that skill go to Gene. How do you measure toothbrushing speed anyway? By swipes? By swishes? By strokes? What do dentists say about that? “For best results, brush your teeth at five strokes a second.” Is that one-way or round trip? If round-trip, it’s gotta be two-and-a-half full strokes, no? And do you brush Yardbirds style: “Over Under Sideways Down”? I suggest we reserve this discussion for the dinner table.

Back to buying toothbrushes. What an amazing array of toothbrushes there are to choose from! It boggles the mind. No wonder so many people wrestle with mental illness. We have brushes that spin, wiggle, jiggle, jerk, whip, chop, grate, blend and liquify. We have brushes that tell time. Well, that’s almost true: I was in Safeway the other day drooling over the tooth products selection and discovered a toothpaste dispenser for kids that plays a little tune when you remove the cap. Being the type of person who loves messing around in grocery stores (get a life, Mary Jo), I opened the lid to see what it did. (Who knew one could make a poem out of opening a toothpaste cap?) Well, it started playing. And it played. And played. And it kept on playing. I got tired of holding the thing, and a little panicked because I thought the grocery man around the corner was going to come by and stare at me with the evil eye, and I prayed that the little tune, London Bridge or something, would finally stop. “I broke it!” I said to myself, thinking about all the customers who would stop to pick out their three-month toothbrush replenishment, hear a little tune and wonder where it was coming from, find the toothpaste, open the lid and close it to no avail. My mind took the story even further. I imagined the thing finally dying, an innocent mom (who didn’t try everything out like me) purchasing the product for her child, the disappointed kid opening the lid only to hear nothing, and crying, and the mother telling her kid, “Sorry, we’re NOT going back to the store, so use it anyway!” and the kid throwing a tantrum, breaking lamps and throwing toys. So I opened the lid again, hoping that maybe something in that action would make it quit. Like when you whack on a computer keyboard hoping somehow it will reach Bill Gates and he will finally tell his employees that they’re not going home until they make a software program that actually works without a hundred thousand glitches.

It didn’t stop. London Bridge had just about disintegrated completely and was floating down the Thames, right upstream of Southwark. Desperate, I finally had an insight: read the instructions. On the front of the package it said, “Plays music for 70 seconds.” Relieved, I put the toothpaste back on the shelf and walked away, thinking about how many times that tube of toothpaste would one day soon be sitting on the counter by the bathroom sink, playing London Bridge to an empty bathroom for 50 seconds as the tune played itself out after the kid finished brushing.

So which kind of toothbrush is better? You have brushes with long bristles on the outside and short ones on the inside. You have those with the little rubber pick on the end designed to help you get stuff out from between your teeth. You have some that visually let you know when it’s time to buy a new brush. You have others that are alleged to “reach” better than others. You have different bristle consistencies. You have toothbrushes of different sizes to accommodate different mouths. Dentists sometimes advise me to get a kid-sized toothbrush. Though that might be an insult, I’m grateful that I don’t have to add “a big mouth” to my list of personal liabilities. But it also means that if I select that kind of brush, my options are pretty limited, and perhaps even a little embarrassing: Care Bears, Hot Wheels, Strawberry Shortcake, Spongebob Squarepants,  Spiderman, Scooby-Doo — which means that there are advantages to having a big mouth!

How about a toothbrush that talks? “Ouch. You are hurting me.” “You have now brushed long enough.”  “Please do not insult me by using Crest.” “Please do not rinse me in the commode.”

Other ideas for inventors who work for Proctor & Gamble:

Replaceable bristles. Interchangeable handles with designs to fit one’s mood. Medicated toothbrushes containing hangover relief, caffeine, or prozac. Brushes with hose attachments so you can power-wash your teeth. How about pre-loaded toothbrushes, or toothbrushes that fill themselves when you press a button on the handle?

When will they invent a toothbrush or paste that works so well you only have to use it once a week, month, or year? Some people think that’s how you’re supposed to use them. Think how much money you could save if you had no teeth? It wouldn’t matter how much time passed: three months, six months, six years! Little Johnny: “Look Ma, no cavities!” Ma: “Look, son, no teeth!”

Time to venture away from the subject of toothbrushes, having been reminded of the ancient commercial of my idyllic childhood: “Look, Ma, no cavities!” Those were the good old days, when little boys in commercials looked like Howdy Doody with red hair and freckles and talked like Beaver Cleaver; ads told it like it is without all the clever hype that leaves you remembering the commercial but not the product; babies wore cloth diapers and plastic pants; Wonder Bread helped build strong bodies 12 ways; you could see the USA in your Chevrolet; you got a cup-and-a-half of flavor in every cup of instant Maxwell House; you had three selections of toothpastes, all in mint flavor; M&Ms melted in your mouth, not in your hands, came in only one flavor, and had two shades of brown; pop came in bottles out of which many other people had once drunk and a 16-ounce bottle was huge; pop can tops were removable; water was served in restaurants in cone-shaped disposable cups that fit into brushed-stainless-steel holders and everyone actually got water; Dixie cups came in red and blue with a white border around the top; you could buy huge blocks of ice from a vending machine; there were only about five flavors of ice cream; dishwashing liquid bottles had the “snip-top” cap; laundry soap boxes contained a free towel or a goblet (remember Dash?); and gee, about the only thing that hasn’t changed is Reynolds Wrap which, I suppose, is still oven-tempered (scrunch, unscrunch) for flexible strength.

And summers were actually hot from July until mid-September.

By the time you finish reading this, it will be time for you to get a new toothbrush.

You Just Wait

I get a kick out of my son. He hates it when I do that — when I giggle at him as he behaves like a kid behaves. It’s a hoot and a joy watching this boy evolve and expand and blossom into the person he is. I love that element of surprise. What’s next?

I know, I know. “The fun has just begun,” you seasoned parents say.

“You just wait.”

I don’t think I’m going to wait. I’m going to enjoy what’s happening right now. Seems to work better that way. If I enjoy now, and the things he does that happen in it, well, I’m sure the future will take care of itself. Adventure? Most likely. Misery? Only if I let it be misery. Not that there won’t be times when I think misery is upon me, but I have control over whether or not I’m going to let the teabag of misery steep until the tea is barely drinkable.

I sat in my green recliner and watched the boy as he got ready for school. He’s not ready to inhabit his own bedroom upstairs — at night — far, far away from the presence of Mom, who serves as a stable force in the face of the apparitions that threaten to materialize out of the darkness or jump out of closets or hide around corners or peer from behind chests of drawers.

I remember when I was a kid, lying on my bed before fading off to sleep, deliberately making sure my arm was not hanging down the side of the bed, lest a witch reach out from the dust-bunny nether regions underneath and grab it. I don’t think I’d pondered what would happen after the claw grabbed my arm. It was just the idea of it. I knew there was no witch. But unconsciously I’d rather have tied my arm to the bedpost than have something to be scared about. It was the fear of fear, more than it was the avoidance of evil witches. And so it is with Benjamin. One day, he’ll stake his claim to his own private space. He’ll up and say, “Mom, I’m going to sleep upstairs.” Maybe not every night, at first. But it will happen just as naturally as so many things happen in his life, without the need for extreme parental policing of the growing-up process.

So, as I sat in my recliner, I watched as he pulled a shirt out of the chest of drawers I’ve stashed in a convenient corner of the dining room — an alternative to the laundry basket that was the centerpiece for an array of clothes randomly piled around it. I advised him for the umpteenth time to close the drawers. He stuffed his shirts (now you know where the term “stuffed shirt” comes from) back into the drawer and closed it. I snickered.

“Stoooop!” he ordered.

“I just think you’re cute.”

He carried his clothes into the living room, which was in full view of the chair where I was sitting in the corner of my dining room.

“Go away!” He wanted to change his clothes, and he didn’t want me to watch and laugh.

“OK. I’ll pretend I’m not here.” I laughed at my own joke and the absurdity of it.

“Stoooop!”

I got up and left him to his task, still snorting at the idea of pretending I wasn’t there.

“Stop that!”

I have days when the chaos and randomness gets on my nerves. But I really like the days when I see the whimsy of it. In the cache of memories I’ll have as I look back on these times, I’ll find the day when wet clothes of neighbor kids spun in the dryer after the water balloon experiment. The boys hopped around my house wearing long underwear, chosen from an array I threw in a pile for their choosing. The long john pants on short John kept falling down. We all giggled at the lacy V collar with the little flower at the point — Jake’s outfit. Queen Kelly reigned over her royal realm as the hem of my chenille bathrobe dragged along the floor beneath her.

I’ll remember how I sent the kids home when I caught them graffiti-ing the sidewalk with the spray paint I’d foolishly placed in the pile of junk I’d arranged by the curb for the city clean-up. I thank my lucky stars they had just gotten started. (What is it with kids and paint, anyway?)

I’ll remember the day I drove to Walmart to pick the kids up after they’d walked there to buy Pokemon cards. They raced to the car dragging with them a child’s basketball hoop, a dirty, matted stuffed dog about the size of your garden variety farm pet, and a container of sidewalk chalk (what a wonderful alternative to paint!), all carefully chosen from yards along the way (for the city-wide pickup), temporarily stored in front of the Hy-Vee grocery store.

I’ll remember looking around the crafts section at Walmart for a nose. Yes, a nose. For the dog they’d picked up from someone’s yard. I was going to wash the poor critter, but it needed a nose, to prevent the stuffing in the head from coming out of the hole where the original schnozz used to be. Unfortunately, Walmart did not have a nose.

I’ll remember picking up a baby bed mattress from a curbside junk pile to serve as a cheap alternative to a trampoline, thus preserving what’s left of the bed that Benjamin will one day sleep in again.

And the memories just keep on comin’.

The fun of the now is what makes them great memories. Re-runs, played on the TV screens of the mind. Artworks, rendered on the canvas of the heart. The feelings of them, preserved from the past and played forward into the future, ever available in the now. Shaping the sculpture of life, carving out perfection.

Meanwhile, I’m putting the spray paint cans where they can’t be reached. I’m not convinced the kids are ready yet to say, “I think I’m going to leave these cans alone.” In this case, I’ll wait.