Gladys
If necessity is the mother
of invention, then I should have invented the solution to the family toothbrush
problem years ago when our family increased to one more person than
there were colors of toothbrushes. I have often marveled that manufacturers of
such necessities as the toothbrush have never been aware that some families
exceed the number of four! We are now eight to be exact, and unless we had two
people use the same color of toothbrush, one half of the family was left out. The
thing that perturbed me the most was the fact that half of my family wouldn’t
have noticed even if they had had no
toothbrush!
It took a little while for
this knowledge to sink into my brain, but I was well on my way to comprehension
the night we played the newlywed game at a dinner party. One of the questions
asked of the husbands was: “What color is your toothbrush?” Mine answered,
“Gee, I don’t know. I just open the drawer and grab one. The first one I grab
is the one I use.”
When I recovered from the
embarrassment, I vowed I’d make some changes at home. Upon inspection, I
discovered that three of our six toothbrushes (two children shy of where we are now) were the same color and brand,
all of them equally worn out. I purchased six new toothbrushes, but the task
was not as simple as I had anticipated. There were exactly four colors to
choose from. I opted for four colors in one style, and then two small
children’s brushes with faces on the handles in two of the four colors. I only
cost me $19.37. Sculptured toothbrushes are very costly!
Any parent with more than
one child knows exactly what happened when I got home. All four children wanted
the red clown toothbrush. Try as I would, nobody wanted to make life easier for
me, so to prevent choosing favorites, I took the red clown toothbrush for
myself, gave my husband the blue clown toothbrush and gave all the kids the
plain toothbrushes. Now I could be sure of two things: first, my husband would
never forget which toothbrush was his, and second, he’d never use it.
The plot thickened shortly
after that, when I had spent a rather busy morning and was running a little
late. I rushed into the bathroom to brush my teeth only to find the drawer
completely void of all toothbrushes, so I checked all the other drawers and the
cupboard. Still, there were no toothbrushes. I angrily slammed the drawers shut
and smashed my finger. I swished some water around in my mouth and rushed out
of the bathroom, trying to forget the whole ordeal. A couple of hours passed
before I thought about the missing toothbrushes, but when the toilet flooded
later that morning, I became reasonably suspicious. Sure enough! With each
push-pull motion of the plunger, up came another toothbrush!
Toothbrushes were on sale for a dollar each, but we had increased one more in number by then. I searched
forty-five minutes through a bin of toothbrushes for seven brushes of any color
that had soft bristles. I managed to find four with soft bristles and had to
buy three that weren’t on sale to get all seven toothbrushes with soft bristles
in a variety of three different colors, and spent $1.98 on a permanent magic
marker to write names on the toothbrushes. The names wore off in a week and the
dilemma was back again. When our sixth child was born, I hated myself for
having another baby, making the mission even more impossible.
One day I was shopping in
a small variety store when I almost tripped over a shopping cart full of
monogrammed combs and toothbrushes! Praise the Lord! My prayers had been
answered. Now, in our family it’s easy to find monogrammed items because we all
have common names. I spent two hours inspecting every single toothbrush in that
bin, only to find that they were all sold out of GLADYS’, JAMES’, WILLIAM’s,
and JUNIOR’s. They didn’t even have the alternates of MOM, JIM, BILL, or JR. I
did, however, have in my possession a GEORGE, HENRY, ANN, and a RON. I settled
for CAROL, VIC, FRANK, and ROY to take the places of the missing names. I
figured at least we’d all have a toothbrush with a different name permanently
engraved on it—even if it wasn’t our own name.
Upon arrival home and an
introduction to the new toothbrushes, James immediately spoke up, “I’ll take
VIC for victory! (If I had known VIC stood for victory, I’d have taken that one
for myself and let him have CAROL!) ROY was green and that had been the same
color as Junior’s old toothbrush, so I thought it might be easier for him to
remember that one. William seemed satisfied with FRANK and I knew I’d end up
with CAROL. I even hammered some nails up on the inside of the cupboard door so
all the toothbrushes would hang without getting hair in them from the combs and
brushes in the drawer.
There hasn’t been a great
deal of evolution in the family’s brushing habits in spite of all my labors. I
finally retired from my attempt to improve the situation. James was complaining
that his toothbrush was worn out. I simply said, “Use ROY, he never brushes his
teeth anyway.”
George, overhearing our
conversation, gave me a blank look and said, “Who the hell is Roy?”
