"Toothpaste belongs on the brush," I tell my children in an earnest voice. I hold up a sample toothbrush, the sort someone received from the dentist ages ago. The bristles stand tall and the plastic is smooth in my hand. A perfect example of a toothbrush. I go through the motions--all of them--slowly. Opening the cap of the toothpaste, squeezing it onto the brush, and then replacing the cap.
"The tube goes back into the cabinet." My voice is monotone to my own ears and I'm sure my expression holds nothing but boredom in it. "You brush, then rinse, then replace your brush back into the cabinet. If follow those steps," I pause and look at the four beasts in front of me, "you get clean teeth and you don't get toothpaste on the walls. Got it?"
The twins roll their eyes and move back toward their chairs, where their books wait for them. Aaron looks at me with a protest on his lips, but knows better than to even try. He shakes his head and exits the room, too. Only one head, that of Melina, nods up and down. She's my rule follower and will take my demonstration to heart. If I give her a wet paper towel, she might even go around the bathroom and remove the offending toothpaste from the walls, the cabinet edges, and the cracks in the floor.
But I have to wonder, really, how in the heck the toothpaste reached such destinations in the first place. Every morning, when I head into the half-bathroom off the kitchen, I am astounded at the amount of toothpaste clinging to the green walls. It doesn't matter that I've wiped the room down the night before. The white crust of the toothpaste-that-was lays at the bottom of the sink, a glob of bright blue goo adheres to the top of the toilet bowl, and a minute smear of aqua, almost imperceptible really (like it's trying to hide), is right next to the light switch. And I have to ask myself how.
Because if the children simply put the toothpaste on the brush and stand in front of the sink and brush and spit and rinse and return the utensil to the cabinet, there is no way that toothpaste should end up spread around the room. There's just no way. So I must be looking at this all wrong. I must be thinking that my children brush their teeth the way I do, when really, they don't. Maybe their toothbrush becomes a microphone, or a conductor's baton, a measuring tool, a chopstick, or a whole host of other things of which I am not aware.
Or maybe it's the fairies again. They've been known to cause a ruckus before.
"The tube goes back into the cabinet." My voice is monotone to my own ears and I'm sure my expression holds nothing but boredom in it. "You brush, then rinse, then replace your brush back into the cabinet. If follow those steps," I pause and look at the four beasts in front of me, "you get clean teeth and you don't get toothpaste on the walls. Got it?"
The twins roll their eyes and move back toward their chairs, where their books wait for them. Aaron looks at me with a protest on his lips, but knows better than to even try. He shakes his head and exits the room, too. Only one head, that of Melina, nods up and down. She's my rule follower and will take my demonstration to heart. If I give her a wet paper towel, she might even go around the bathroom and remove the offending toothpaste from the walls, the cabinet edges, and the cracks in the floor.
But I have to wonder, really, how in the heck the toothpaste reached such destinations in the first place. Every morning, when I head into the half-bathroom off the kitchen, I am astounded at the amount of toothpaste clinging to the green walls. It doesn't matter that I've wiped the room down the night before. The white crust of the toothpaste-that-was lays at the bottom of the sink, a glob of bright blue goo adheres to the top of the toilet bowl, and a minute smear of aqua, almost imperceptible really (like it's trying to hide), is right next to the light switch. And I have to ask myself how.
Because if the children simply put the toothpaste on the brush and stand in front of the sink and brush and spit and rinse and return the utensil to the cabinet, there is no way that toothpaste should end up spread around the room. There's just no way. So I must be looking at this all wrong. I must be thinking that my children brush their teeth the way I do, when really, they don't. Maybe their toothbrush becomes a microphone, or a conductor's baton, a measuring tool, a chopstick, or a whole host of other things of which I am not aware.
Or maybe it's the fairies again. They've been known to cause a ruckus before.
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