Dental Illness

All relationships need boundaries. In our house, there’s one that’s redrawn daily.

“Stop using my toothbrush!”

It sounds reasonable enough. Sharing toothbrushes is gross, especially in cold and flu season.  So why must we have this conversation again and again?

The answer is that we’re always rushed when we brush our teeth. In the morning, we’re trying to get to work/school. At night, we’re trying to get to bed. Also, we have about three billion toothbrushes that look exactly alike. Yes, we color-code. But then the dentist hands us free toothbrushes that don’t comply. A pink toothbrush person gets a pristine blue number at a check-up, and the whole system’s wrecked.  Believe you me: no child of mine is going to give up her new toothbrush just because it’s Dad’s color.

Then there are all the individual toothbrush bylaws. They include the-impossible-to-remember:

-“I don’t like character toothbrushes anymore.”

-“The Giant toothbrushes are ok but not the Kroger ones.”

-“Child-size toothbrushes are for babies.”

-“My downstairs toothbrush is green with red patterns, and my upstairs one is red with green patterns.”

I’ve thought of labeling everyone’s toothbrush with my fancy label maker. But within a day the stickers would get gunky and peel off. (Fast forward to me fetching Futura font out of the drain with chopsticks.) Sharpie markers seem like a good idea for identifying brushes. But hello, false advertising, Crest dissolves “permanent” ink.

Last night my husband picked up his toothbrush and bristled to find it was wet. “Who used my toothbrush?!” He demanded. But did it matter? The damage was done. “THIS is my toothbrush, not this one,” he said, holding up two blue sticks. In the sallow glow of the Cars II nightlight, I struggled to see the difference. I flicked on the vanity light and tried to commit the brushes’ identifying marks to memory. One had a two-tone blue pattern and a name brand. The other was a slate-blue model from CVS. What bit of information would I dump from my brain to make room for this new data? Maybe the picture of Ryan Lochte biting an Olympic medal with his grill on.