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There
are some upsides to being married to me. I think. My poor husband has
been doing his tour of duty with me for 20 years this June. That's if
you don't count the dating years, which you shouldn't, because in those
days I was still on my best behavior. Most of the time. Through
the years, I have involved my husband in a lot of self improvement
schemes. You see, although I always WANT to improve, I can't really do
it- unless someone is forcing me. And so it is that we have embarked
together on weight loss plans, exercise and fitness regimes, and (my
husband is SOOOOO lucky) I even coordinate our wardrobes so we look good
together. Some times. That Hawaiian look back in the 80's was kind of a
bust. So last
week when I drug my husband to Wal-Mart, he became naturally
apprehensive as I pulled him towards the pharmacy area. "You
are going to LOVE this!" I said to him, grabbing his arm and
drawing him to the dental care aisle. "What
are we getting?" He gulped, and looked at the picks, brushes and
creams before our eyes. "Well!"
I chirped, "Remember the whiter, brighter teeth you have always
dreamed of?" "You
mean," he dead panned, "The whiter brighter teeth YOU have
always dreamed of?" "Whatever."
I said. "The Today show reviewed these tooth whitener
products." "Uh
huh." He said. "Well,
we are going to BUY this product." I enthused. He
shrugged, but I just knew that after a few days using this stuff with
me, he'd be so thrilled with the whiter brighter smile he'd always
dreamed of, he'd forget his hesitancy in beginning. While we
were in the check-out line, I gave him the instructions. "Says here
that you need to paint a thin coat of the stuff on your teeth every
night before sleeping, and then you just go to sleep with it on. So!
" I continued, "I'll paint your teeth and you paint my teeth.
Won't that be fun?" That
night we began. He painted a coating on my teeth. It felt like caulk.
"This should be enjoyable." I drooled, over my caulk-coated
teeth, "but imagine those pearly whites." When
it came my turn to do his teeth, I got the giggles. Not the tee-hee a
couple of times kind of laughs, but the screaming, falling down on the
floor- can't look at him now or here they'll come again kind of laughs.
When I finally managed to get a hold of myself and caulk those puppies
up, my hubby asked, "How many nights do we have to do this?"
He drooled that question out to me, and after pondering the
instructions, I dropped the bombshell: "Just thirty nights or
so." "THIRTY
NIGHTS?! I have to sleep with this (word omitted to protect innocent
readers) on my teeth for THIRTY NIGHTS?!" He bellowed. I
checked the box. It stipulated that the basic treatment was for 14 days;
but most people (corn teeth, or basically anyone who without a Hollywood
white smile) needed to repeat the process to achieve the results
pictured on the front of the box. The next
morning, when I woke up, I ran my tongue over what used to be my teeth.
The whitening agent had dried to the consistency of plaster on my teeth
and little stalactites and stalemates had formed on my teeth in the
night. My husband was at the sink, trying to brush off his plaster and
was yelling at me because apparently it wasn't a job easily done. I
sighed, picked off a piece of plaster from my teeth and handed him the
electric toothbrush. When he had finally managed to clear the crust from
his teeth, he smiled. "How do they look?" I stared. I turned
my head and looked again. I squinted my eyes and moved in close. The
teeth looked basically the same. Whitish but not the whiter brighter
smile he had always dreamed of. Or that I had always dreamed of.
Whatever. "Don't worry, " I said, as I turned the electric
brush onto the coating on my teeth, "Just twenty nine more days and
we'll be blinding folks with our smiles." When that day comes, I
thought to myself, then he'll be really glad he married someone like me. |
