While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

A Tale of Two Toothbrushes.

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And now for a story.

My sister Heelya is particular about her teeth, which is understandable. She’s had so many teeth drilled we joke that her mouth is a member of OPEC.

Because we didn’t have dental coverage growing up we rarely saw the dentist. He was a haggler anyway, or at least that’s what my dad said.
Of my two sisters Heelya spazzes out the quickest over things like germs and toenails. My dad likes to joke that my youngest sister PK should’ve been a doctor. She was always operating on the family, always carrying around a satchel of medieval looking tools, offering to fix our skin ailments, ingrown hairs, blisters, that sort of thing.

It was disgusting. I partially blame my Opa who owned the exact same kit – a zippered pouch of metal nail files, clippers, tweezers, and whatever other crevice digging devices might accompany such things. PK coveted the pouch as a little girl and whenever we visited my grandparents she would help herself to it in the cabinet with the bath towels and immediately start picking at her feet blisters. She was a figure skater so blisters ravaged her feet.

Soon she assumed ownership of the best tweezers in my house, the ones my father filed into daggers with points so sharp you could pierce the skin in one pinch, or kill an intruder under hostage circumstances. Regardless none of this has anything to do with the story I’m about to tell.

We all shared one bathroom – me, PK, Heelya, my mom, my dad and on weekends whatever friends had spent the night. Our toothbrushes never fit in one of those cup things with the holes in it. No matter what cup thing my mom purchased there were only four holes in it. God friggen forbid someone use the same color toothbrush, the same no-name brand Reach toothbrush and risk mistaken brush identity. 

I pity my sister Heelya, but she should’ve known better when she purchased a blue toothbrush. My father had a blue toothbrush and unlike the time we all decided to label our toothbrushes with masking tape and my father labeled his Jerry Maguire because it was 1996 and all his girls had crushes on a pre-douchey Tom Cruise, unlike that time this time his blue toothbrush was not labeled.

For weeks, maybe months, my sister Heelya would wake up for school and brush her teeth with the same toothbrush my father had used to brush his teeth three hours earlier. By the time she grabbed the brush the bristles would be dry. She was totally clueless.

Until one day, she woke up earlier, reached for her brush and realized it was wet and the bristles were flattened. Over her morning bowl of cereal she asked my father, “Dad, what toothbrush are you using?”

Story goes he walked into the bathroom, reached for what he thought was his toothbrush and said, this one.

“Omigod,” my sister shrieked. 

Or so I think this is how it ends. When I called my dad this morning to confirm the details he said, “Yeesus Christ. Did your sister call you complaining about some kind of mouth virus?”