I bought my son an electric toothbrush because trying to brush his teeth manually had become a nightly exercise in forcible mouth sodomy. Kids don’t understand why they have to put toothpaste on a brush and scrub their teeth for twenty agonizing seconds, and even if you tell them why—Your teeth will fall out! Girls will never kiss you!—they still don’t get it.
I tried bribing my son. I tried reverse psychology by saying, “Whoa, hey, don’t go brushing those teeth! That would get you in big trouble, amigo.” I tried doing that thing they suggest in parenting books where you say to your kid, “Your teeth aren’t brushed!” This presents them with a problem to solve. My teeth are not brushed; therefore, I must brush them. The idea is that most children like solving problems rather than being told what to do. You can’t ask them to brush their teeth because that gives them a chance to say no. The phrasing must be precise, like the wording of a will.
But the boy was no sap. He knew that he was three years old and had NO problems of any sort. No life-form on earth has it easier than a three-year-old child. You don’t have to go to school, you don’t have to have a job, and you’re perfectly happy having a train for a best friend. What did he need to solve a problem for? Problems were for bigger, dumber people. He could have given a shit about his unbrushed teeth.
So every night, I had to grab his big head and jam the brush into his mouthhole and he cried and screamed and acted as if I were a Hanoi prison guard toying with his psyche. Fed up with this process, I bought an electric toothbrush and put all kinds of cool stickers on it, hoping he might come to enjoy brushing his teeth.
“Look, it’s got a motor!” I said. “It’s a toy! You can blast all the bad plaque goblins with it!” You have to make everything sound fun to a child. Brushing your teeth is blasting plaque goblins. Broccoli soup is monster soup. A trip to the drugstore is a trip to the witch’s laboratory. It gets tiring.
I put some toothpaste on the new toothbrush (we bought five different kinds of paste before finding one that suited his palate), turned it on, and handed it to him. He ran into my room with it, threw it on the ground so that the toothpaste could pick up random hairs and bits of lint, then pulled down his underwear and started grabbing his dick. I rinsed the brush off, put on more paste, and handed it back to him.
“Once you brush your teeth, Daddy will tell you a story.”
Slowly but surely, my son turned the brush on, raised the brush to his mouth, and placed it on one of his teeth. Massive success. I felt as if I’d just deadlifted five hundred pounds. Only fifteen some-odd teeth to go and my effort would be an official triumph. I figured that now the brush was in his mouth, we’d be cruising.
Instead, the boy took the brush out of his mouth and stared down at his dick. Then he looked up at me. I knew what was coming next. There are those moments when you know exactly what’s going to happen, only you’re powerless to stop it.
I screamed out, “NOT ON YOUR PENIS, NOOOOO!!!”
But he was too fast and I was too old and fat. The vibrating brush went right down onto his dick, which I’m sure felt terrific to him. And then, once the boy felt his dick was sufficiently brushed, he stuck it back in his mouth. Then he giggled.
My mom was visiting, because of course she was. Weird shit like this only happens when grandparents visit, as if the children wait for that exact moment to make you look bad. I went down and told her what happened, and I assumed she and I would have a good laugh over it. He brushed his peener, HA HA! Kids brush the damnedest things!
Instead, she quickly inhaled through clenched teeth, the way you do when you watch someone tell a bad joke during a wedding toast.
“Oh, Drew.”
She looked truly concerned, as if I were raising a goddamn criminal. It wasn’t my fault, Mom. I didn’t tell him to brush his dick and then eat it. And don’t think you would have done any better.
Ever since that night, I have instituted the following rule in our house: No one is allowed to brush his or her teeth without pants on. Ever. It was one of those commonsense rules I never would have thought of ten years ago because I was single and alone and had yet to meet anyone who enjoyed brushing his own penis.
NITS
My daughter had just gotten home from school and my wife pulled me aside to speak to me in hushed tones.
“Did you hear about Marshall Reilly?” she asked me.
“Who is that? Is that a famous person?”
“It’s one of her classmates.”
“Oh. Really?”
“Yes, really. You’ve met his mother several times.”
“I have?”
“You know! She has brown hair. Her husband’s name is Mike. He’s a lawyer.”
“(blank stare)”
“Anyway, the point is that he’s in her class, and he got head lice this week. We got a note about it.”
“HEAD LICE?!”
“Shhhhh!”
“Oh man, that’s gross as shit,” I said.
“Isn’t it?”
“Do they not bathe him? Does the kid play in the toilet all day?”
“I don’t know, but we should keep an eye on her.”