Perfect Storm Converges in Minneapolis Bathroom

Former roommates know I have two (I swear! Only two!) peculiarities: (1) I hate when food wrappers/remains (particularly banana peels) are thrown anywhere but in the kitchen garbage, and (2) I get extremely panicky when I think someone else has used my toothbrush.

The toothbrush thing can be traced pretty far back, but was definitely exacerbated in April 1998. I was studying in London for the semester, and a group of us traveled to Scotland for a week. We took an overnight bus out of London, and by the end of the next day had hitchhiked to the southern point of the Isle of Skye, far from any convenience store. As we settled in to a little hostel at the foothills of the Cuillins, Theresa noticed that she had forgotten her toothbrush. Somehow, I suppose because I was her closest friend on the trip, this became my problem. "Come on," she said, "just let me use your toothbrush." My response was not a word. It was more like a deep rumbling in the throat. She pressed on: "It's no big deal. It's just like kissing. You would kiss me, right?" Sharing a toothbrush is NOT like kissing. It involves an extreme digging up and swapping of germs. But, I was also empathetic. It drives me nuts not to be able to brush my teeth. And we were in the boonies; she had no other choice. I sighed. "Sure, I would kiss you," I said.

The next week, back in London, I was dealing with red, swollen gums. If I brushed my teeth too hard, they bled. I asked Theresa oblique questions about communicable diseases. I became paranoid that all of my roommates were using my toothbrush. I bought a new one. I boiled it every few days. I slept with it under my pillow.

Toothbrushes come in these wacky colors that help you identify which one is yours, which is nice. The color of our toothbrush is one of the many small but frequently changing details that we have to keep track of in our daily lives, along with our pin numbers, location of our car keys, approximate amount of gas left in the car, etc. etc. etc. Of course this would be easier if I committed to a toothbrush color and stuck with it, but that's boring. And my spouse is on his own toothbrush cycle sometimes (like, say, he went on a trip and lost his old brush so had to get a new one), so there is of course always the danger that in a few overlapping weeks, we could end up with the same color, and then I have to remember some secondary identifying factor, like the brand of the brush I happen to be using these three months. I try to avoid this scenario by picking up slightly obscure colors (like, say, orangey-yellow). I think what I'm trying to say here is that since I get a new toothbrush every few months, I don't get too attached, and I'm not so concerned about picking it out of a line-up; I just remember enough basic details to identify which of the two brushes on the bathroom sink is probably mine and which one is probably not.

Which, of course, can be complicated by the addition of a roommate (Greta is living here for awhile).

Voila. The perfect storm: