Writing is like being able to put life into a snow globe. It takes the things that are too big and scary and reduces them into a form that I can put away when I want and look at from a distance. It also takes all that’s good in life and captures it into something I can take out when I want and look at close up and keep forever. It makes the bad things into something I can hold…and the good things into something I can hold onto. Both help so much that I need that little souvenir of life.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

All I Want for Christmas for My Two Front Teeth

 “Where is it!? I will f-ing die if I don’t get it! I mean it,” she turns to me. “It’s like a f-ing fix, you know?
I look over at her, startled, wondering if this girl is trying to shock me with all of those f-words. I decide she doesn’t even seem aware of them. She is a tall, thin, pretty girl maybe in her late twenties, with braces and glasses, edgy-intellectual looking. In a movie, I would cast her as the cool-quirky girl. We are alone in a Target aisle, almost alone in the store late on a Saturday night with the first snow of the season coming down in wet, lazy flakes in the dark parking lot. The “fix” she is talking about is, of all things, dental floss.
“No sh-t, I mean it. This stuff is so good, I’d buy up every last one the store had if they ever discontinued it. And not just because I have braces, but because I almost need my dental floss to, you know….”
“…gouge that stuff out of there,” I finish for her, nodding. I’ve been standing in front of the floss display, lamenting the fact that my last good brand has apparently been discontinued (again!), willing another good one to appear. And by “good,” I mean serious floss. None of this namby-pamby stuff. No cutesy little spools of thread. Not the gentle kind. I don’t want my floss to hurt the food particles’ feelings a little. I want it to decimate them with what appears in the pictorial blow-ups on the label as miniature medieval weaponry.
She explodes with the shock of finding a commiserative sister-in-dental-floss-obsession. “YES! I mean, I don’t care how hard I have to dig into those f-ing teeth, I need that f-ing sh-t out of there. People don’t realize you can smell it if they don’t get it out. Their f-ing breath smells!” She is clearly appalled by those filthy mouths. “But this sh-t”—she locates her brand, and I feel the briefest disappointment that her brand is different from mine—“this is the bomb.”
I study the one she is offering. Unconventional packaging. I like that, but I’m wary. I’ve been fooled before. “It isn’t the kind that’s like tiny pipe cleaners that poke between your teeth, is it? Or the kind that’s like a long rubber band that flings food particles across the room like a slingshot?” I ask. I’ve tried them all by now and I especially hate that kind. Who wants to catapult masticated food across the room with a little band of elastic? Eww.
“NO!” She explodes again. Is she drunk? On drugs? Or merely that excited about dental floss? I honestly can’t tell. “Oh, f-k, I can open it, I’m buying it anyway. No sh-t, it’s the f-ing bomb.” She opens it to show me.
I admire the dental floss, thank her, and take some to try. She strolls away, this patron saint of dental floss, this paragon of clean mouths.
And—go figure—the girl knew her floss. It really is the f-ing floss bomb.

This drives me crazy, that God seems to have no taste, no standards. Yet on most days, this is what gives some of us hope. ~Anne Lamott, Plan B Further Thoughts on Faith


18 comments:

  1. I have a co-worker who uses the "f" bomb pretty much like an adjective. It is peppered through every sentence she speaks. I guess I've gotten used to it. Hope you enjoy your f-ing new floss.

    Pat
    Critter Alley

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    1. Unfortunately it seems to be a growing trend. I'm hoping it's a fad that will come to feel dated.

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  2. Hari OM
    I love a happy ending!.. wonder if we can develop a floss - or should that be flush - for her particular kind of foul mouth??! YAM xx

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  3. Tammy-This real-life encounter proves that truth is stranger than fiction. Well-done!

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    1. Thanks. Truth is indeed pretty darned strange!

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  4. Linda and I welcome you to the Weirdo Magnet Club.

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    1. Thank you, but I've had a lifetime membership since I was a child.

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  5. This is funny and so real!
    When I read it I kept thinking about the commercial where the woman dressed in white is on a quest to clean up potty mouths because I think the woman who kept dropping the f-bomb could use more than dental floss to clean her mouth.

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    1. Oh! The gum commercial? Hee hee! Yes, this woman could have used that. Or a bar of soap.

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  6. F-ing. Brilliant. Post.

    And I want to know what brand you bought. My husband bought that elastic crap---gak! I HATE it! The knucklehead who thought it up and sold it as a good idea should be forced to use it every day for the rest of his life. It's awful---does exactly what you said. Flings ickiness all over the place. *shudders*

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    1. YES! I thought I was the only one, because lately that kind seems to be taking over floss displays everywhere. My real favorite is Reach Deep Clean, but the kind my new friend got me to try is Oral-B Superfloss. I should add it's a bit weird. Not on a spool, for one thing, and has two sections - regular and spongy. I'm not crazy about the regular, but love the spongy!

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  7. This story is hilarious! And now the word is out - Oral-B Superfloss, spongy! Just might have to get some of that!

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    1. I still prefer Reach Deep Clean, though. Wish I could still find it.

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  8. That foul mouth was determined to have a clean mouth. You have to wonder about some people.

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    1. True. I guess it's one more example of the ways people define things differently!

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  9. Hmm... glad she found her floss. Though maybe she should have been in the soap aisle because that potty mouth could use some scrubbin'. Cute post!

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