Story Time

Just a quick one today:

I used to brush my teeth in my shower. It's true. It's not terribly interesting, but true, none-the-less. Now, the obvious question to follow this is, "Tyler, dearest, why on earth don't you brush your teeth in the shower any more?" Well, I'll tell you...but just be warned -- it involved behavior that can only be described as "really freaking stupid."

Now, I used to keep my brush (let's call him "Mr. Colgate," because that was his goddamn name) in one of those fancy shower soap holder things. It looked a little something like this:

Only completely different. I think it involved suction cups, or something. Maybe I just dreamed that part. Anyway, it had a similar set up to the above picture -- tray above (for soap), toothbrush holder below (for Mr. Colgate).

Now, wouldn't you know it, but one day I noticed that Mr. Colgate had collected a dollop of, what can only be decribed as "soap," on his bristles. At this point, the intelligent person would run Mr. Colgate under the shower nozzle...maybe give his bristles a little "finger-run-over" to eliminate the possibility of ingesting something awful. But not me. Not Mr. College Graduate (that's what Mr. Colgate used to call me...because that is my goddamn name). No, I'd learned in chemistry that acids and bases eliminate each other...so I figured if I just went ahead and put some toothpaste on the bristles (toothpaste being either an acid...or a base...or whatever...I don't know, I was really tired, okay?), then it'd cancel out the possible twing of soap that'd hit my taste buds.

Well, surprise surprise, it didn't work. Nope, the Aim toothpaste (Mr. Colgate's favorite brand, oddly enough) was completely overpowered by the chemically pungent Dial soap. "Drat," I thought in an old-timey radio voice. "That didn't work." So with a burning mouth full of wicked chemicals, I got out of the shower. Toweled off. Then went to the kitchen to make things right.

What was my brilliant idea? Well, I thought it'd be a good idea to wash the taste out of my mouth with something to drink. "Orange juice ought to do it," is what I didn't say out loud. Three gulps of Minute Maid O.J. later, my mouth now tastes like wicked mix of soap, toothpaste, and orange juice. So I do the next logical thing, I decide to put that chemistry knowledge to use (did I mention that I got a C in my basic chemistry class? No? Well, I did), and drink a few gulps of milk to even things out.

Of course that worked about as well as one would expect. Now my tongue has been treated to a frothy concoction of soap, toothpaste, orange juice, milk, morning breath, and stupidity (which, incidentally, were all nicknames I had at some point in high school). Swallowing my pride (and what was probably a lethal combination of chemicals swirling around my palate), I left my crappy apartment to go to my crappy job in my crappy car.

Crap, I'm dumb.