LJIdol, Topic 6: "Food Memory"
My favourite flavour of toothpaste is mint. I know; hardly a shocker! I love to brush my teeth thoroughly and then take a large gulp of water directly after. Most of the bacteria are gone, fleeing from the foamy wave of wintergreen freshness. It feels sweet, cool, and pure.
Despite the simple pleasure I get from this, every time I go to brush, I feel... conflicted. Specifically about where to squeeze the bottle. Will it be the middle, as always, or the bottom this time?
Squeezing from the bottom is logistically sound. If you work your fingertips just right, you can extract the maximum amount of paste and delay the next refill for another week.
But the middle...
It's such a stupid, small thing. I thought it was stupid and small when I was five years old, too.
My sister's father never thought so. A pinch here, a patting motion there, and the tube would always look smooth, just as it should. God help the children who squeeze the toothpaste from the middle instead of the bottom, exactly so.
I remember veins creeping up his neck like vines of ivy. The boiling crimson hue of his face. I don't remember words as much as I do the volume of the screaming. There were blows; but none of these things were new or isolated to this trigger. Everything set him off. There was never any hiding, no disguising, or avoiding the consequences of a crime -- except with toothpaste.
When I was old enough to get ready for school on my own, I could brush my teeth without supervision. In the mornings and every night, I would close myself into the bathroom and squish the middle of the tube to my heart's content. When this urge was satisfied, I was always certain to form the bottle back into its Dictator Approved shape.
He could make me follow the rules.
He could make me brush my teeth.
But, stars above, he couldn't make me squeeze from the bottom.
So began my quiet revolution.
It has been fourteen years since he left. For every single one of those days, I have dragged myself out of bed and into the bathroom, where I heft the toothpaste in my right hand. If I squeeze from the bottom, I could save a couple dollars. Maybe if I squeeze from the bottom, it means I win because the past doesn't matter anymore. If I squeeze from the bottom, I can stop reminding myself of this tiny thing, every day.
But then I remember that squeezing from the middle is my choice. It was always mine. Damn the irrationality and the extra few bucks and damn him.
Though, the truth is that it's still a stupid and small thing. No one really cares about how you squeeze your toothpaste.
No one except me and the aging monsters in my shadow.
This entry was written as part of the sixth topic of LJ Idol's 8th season, which is "Food Memory."