Wednesday

lesson 6: minty freshness gone to waste

"I don't have much of a sweet tooth," she says. "Maybe it has something to do with the toothpaste?"

"Toothpaste?"

"Yeah, my mom was way into the health food thing before it became the craze it is now. She was buying organic flour before it had that name. It was all well meaning, but torture in the era of baloney, processed cheese, white bread and Oreos. I pretty much had whole-wheat everything with a little eggplant for good measure."

"It's always the era of Oreos, but what does this have to do with toothpaste?"

"Patience grasshopper," she says twirling her rings around her fingers. "She made these cookies that had the consistency of hockey pucks. I think that they had no sugar, no white flour and by default no chocolate or anything appealing. I used to trade them at school."

"For what? For other cookies?"

She bursts out laughing, "No, no. No fear of anyone actually eating them. No the kids played with them in the school yard. A single cookie would last through half of recess. As a puck or super hard thing to throw at people."

"I'm still missing the connection to toothpaste."

She raises an eyebrow at me. "OK. The toothpaste. Well, clearly my mom did not believe in sweets so we never had any around the house. But we did have minty sweet toothpaste."

"You didn't."

"Yeah. I went through almost an entire of tube of the stuff and got violently ill. Too bad though because while I was eating it my breath was very minty fresh."

"That's pretty weird."

"I know."

"What did you learn exactly?"

"Choose your indulgences wisely. And, substitutes don't always work out the way you planned."

2 Comments:

Blogger Sylvia said...

Oh my! My mother banned all the good stuff - oreos and doritos and twinkies and barbie dolls. But my parents were divorced and my dad revelled in all the stuff she'd banned. I'd go to his house for the weekend and we'd have hamburger helper for dinner with cherry coke and then sit in front of the tv with a huge tub of caramel corn. So I never actually was tempted by my toothpaste (although as a teenager, I did drink a hefty dose of Nyquil to get drunk)

4/09/2008 1:14 PM  
Blogger Grumpy but sweet said...

did it work? (the nyquil i mean...)

4/10/2008 12:52 AM  

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