VIC is for Victory

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?”