Has this ever happened to you?
It’s midnight on a Tuesday and you’re getting ready for bed. You put on your comfiest jammies, grab your face wash and your toothbrush, and shuffle down the hall to the communal bathroom. Maybe you’re listening to a podcast, maybe you’re just quietly contemplating the din of typical dorm noises: occasional bursts of laughter, an errant, nap-arresting alarm, the frantic cacophony of flipping pages and scribbling pencils. You push open the bathroom door and evaluate each of the four sinks, and finally pick what you determine to be the cleanest one.
Planted firmly in front of the sink and making intense eye contact with your own reflection, you raise your toothbrush to your lips and begin to scrub those pearly whites. Just as you’re in leaning close to the mirror to inspect that zit on your chin, in comes a fellow student. You glance over at them; maybe you flash a foamy smile.
They pull out their toothbrush. It’s bigger than yours. It vibrates. Your bathroom neighbor frosts their fancy, electric toothbrush with just a little bit more toothpaste than you are using, and commences brushing their teeth. Damn, they’re thorough. They probably don’t have to move their toothbrush back and forth or side to side because of the vibrating, but they do it anyway. You’re feeling a little bit intimidated, a little bit vulnerable in this moment, so you brush your tongue too. You brush all your teeth again. You brush them up and down. You brush your teeth until the foamy toothpaste starts to dribble down your toothbrush and onto your hand and your whole mouth is numb from the minty toothpaste. Finally, you can’t take it anymore. You must spit and rinse.
You steal a quick glance in the mirror at your bathroom neighbor. THEY’RE STILL BRUSHING. How?! you think. How is this possible? You proceed to wash your face thoroughly AND pee AND wash your hands AND stare at yourself in the mirror for enough time to become painfully aware of all of your insecurities. You even floss.
With nothing left to do, you leave the bathroom, head hung low. I couldn’t have brushed for any longer, you think, could I have? And then, Do I have bad oral hygiene? You continue to ponder the inevitable filth in your mouth as you trudge back to your room.
***
Back in the bathroom, the marathon runner of tooth brushing lets out a sigh of relief. Finally, she’s gone, they think. I’ve been holding in this fart for minutes! As their electric toothbrush continues to whir and hum, they let one rip.
