teeth | Good Times with Jess

One of the people I live with has a flexible relationship with the truth. RB will say whatever she wants to get what she wants. Add her darling smile, munchable cheeks, long lashes and I must continue to remind myself that she’s the most untrustworthy person in my life.

If I call her out, she’ll double down and get VERY angry. She can be an absolute lunatic. All she needs is a spray tan and she could run for president. Which is very triggering.

RB does not have stacks of confidential documents in her bathroom, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she did.

I often pick her up from school and one of her hands will be closed in a sweaty, clenched fist. I now know to ask,

“What’s in there?”

“Something I found.”

“You need to go put it back.”

“I found it.”

“Yes, and it belongs to your school.”

The first time this happened one of her teachers was so kind and said,

“Oh a rock, she can keep that!”

I knew she couldn’t. If that’s the route we took back in September she’d have brought home an entire play structure by now.

At one point, she started filling her backpack with toys from inside the classroom.

She seems to have a hoarding personality. She wants more food on her plate even though she’s not going to eat it. She wants all the animals from Noah’s Ark even though her friends want to play too. She wants our entire collection of popsicle sticks, even though she doesn’t know what she’s going to do with them and now I have no idea where they are.

BB got a magnetic marble run for Christmas. It came with 12 large marbles. There are now several missing. RB offered,

“They might be in my room.”

As if they magically rolled upstairs and she had nothing to do with it.

I was in her classroom the other day and I noticed I didn’t see the book we brought in for her birthday. RB tells me,

“I think someone put it behind the book shelf.”

Uh huh.

The other morning I took BB to the bus stop, when I came back in one of BB’s drawings had been ruined. I confronted RB about it. She said,

“You didn’t see me do it!”

The idea of a teenage RB terrifies me.

Another presidential quality of hers is that she is very happy to hold everyone else accountable for things she has no intention of applying to herself. She inspects the trash on a regular basis.

The other day she spotted a Reese’s peanut butter cup wrapper. She picked it out and waved it at me. For someone who’s so OCD about a drop of milk while she’s eating her cereal, it’s unfathomable that she continues to grab things out of the trash.

I have nothing to hide, except my favorite candies, I tell her,

“I ate a Reese’s.” And you didn’t see me do it.

RB looks forward to a bag of fruit snacks AFTER swim lessons. I haven’t eaten fruit snacks in 30 years, but somehow, now that they’re in my handbag, they’re hard to resist. I munch on them on the way TO swim. RB yells,

“How come I smell gummies?! ARE YOU EATING MY GUMMIES?!?!?!”

You are eating my gummies and not until after swim.

The first sign that she may be running for President was when she was two. Her grandmother took her to brush her teeth and asked her which toothbrush was hers. She pointed to it. Her teeth were brushed and off to bed she went.

Grandma then took BB in to brush her teeth. BB picked up the SAME toothbrush and brushed her own teeth. At which point Grandma realized she had been bamboozled and it was too late.

Don’t try to tell me RB didn’t know which toothbrush was hers. She KNOWS. She saw an opportunity to use her sister’s and she took it.

Also at two, RB’s grandma was helping her get her shoes on. She was asked to go get socks. She came back with a pair of her sister’s socks and had a whole spiel about how these are HER socks and she got them for HER birthday.

When we arrive at school, there’s a table with everyone’s name tag. The tags have a photo and their name. RB grabs hers easily. One day all the tags were turned upside down. It had their name only, no photo. RB was perplexed. She stared and stared.

Proof that what I thought was true: she doesn’t know her letters. Another presidential qualification?

She picked up a tag with a name the equivalent of Theodore. I said,

“Good try, but that’s not your name. Try again.”

Instead of going back to the table, she thrust the Theodore tag at me and hollered,

“IT IS MY NAME! It has two “Es”!”

So President Theodore she is.

Reality and the truth have never felt more subjective or imperiled. May there be mercy for our country and my home.

The self-declared fastest skier on the slopes. You don’t need me to fact check that for you

I started writing this several days ago, before the leak, before confirmation that our abortion rights are indeed going down the drain.

I’m rageful and heartbroken, but I don’t have a blog post for that, so I’m moving forward about my choppers.

Teeth. Can’t live without them. Or you can for awhile, just ask my dead grandfather.

My dentist has me coming in for a cleaning every three months in an attempt to keep me away from the periodontist.

I don’t know how the state of my mouth compares to other middle-aged people. It feels like it might be worse than average.

I made it through childhood without any cavities, just a massive amount of orthodontia and one oral cyst.

After college I hit the road and when I returned to the country I had cavities. I added a few more since then. My front tooth chipped and everyone offers to do something about it, but I’m not interested.

My main issue seems to be gum disease. I brush twice a day. I floss. I use mouthwash. I say a prayer to the tooth fairy.

My hygienist shakes her head,

“I don’t understand. You’re doing a good job keeping them clean.”

“Ank ooo.”

“Do you drink coffee?”

No one is coming for my coffee.

“Yes.” I say with a tone that implies this is the end of the conversation.

“How many cups?”

Does the number really make a difference to my teeth?

“Two or three.”

“Over the course of the day?”

“No, in the morning.”

“You might want to try an electric toothbrush.”

I might. I might not. Captain hears the same thing. We get ourselves electric toothbrushes for Christmas.

Among the electric toothbrush’s many capabilities, it times how long you brush for. The gold standard being two minutes.

So here I am, almost 40 years old and if you had asked me six months ago if I brushed for two minutes, I would’ve said.

“Probably.”

I used my electric toothbrush for the first time and it is now safe to say I have NEVER brushed for two minutes until this past December.

Two minutes is a LONG time.

I have time to contemplate my whole life and that only takes the first minute.

The other thing my electric toothbrush has going for her, is that she has a wide range of emotions.

She smiles at me when I turn her on. She frowns if I turn her off before a minute. She gives my a half-hearted smile if I make it into the second minute. She smiles if I make it the full two minutes and if I consistently make it the full two minutes several days in a row, she gives me star eyes.

The pull of the star eyes is strong. I want my toothbrush’s approval. I want it so badly that when I’m sick of brushing and refuse to make it to the two minute mark, I’ll let her run on the side of the sink.

I’m not starting or ending my day on anything less than star eyes.

A couple months ago she prompted me to change the brush head.

That’s not a cheap proposition and she’s got a lot of nerve asking me to do it after 3 months of not brushing for two minutes.

She reminds me again. And again. She hasn’t reminded me in awhile. Maybe she’s given up.

I’m heading in for a cleaning next week. I’m sure they’ll have something to say about a tooth I broke a couple months ago. It’s not painful, so it didn’t feel urgent. I hope my dentist agrees. Or at least takes into consideration how happy my toothbrush is with me.