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Because I am old now I am trying to remember to floss every day. What a terrible state of affairs to be in. I have occasionally used dental floss before, but only for a day or so before realising that life is too short and I’d rather waste that 30 seconds doing something else. I have bought quite a few packs of dental floss in that time, but can’t really remember ever finishing one. I must have managed to at some point and have the vague reminiscence of the tug of the wheel as you get to the end. But maybe it was just a dream of a better world. I have maybe five little tubs (not tubs exactly, what would you call them? Dispensers?) in my bathroom cabinet and genuinely have no idea of how long I might have had them. The one I am currently more occasionally using than usual looks quite knackered and the Oral B sticker on it is all cracked up and perishing and I have found myself wondering how old it might be. There is a chance that this is a tube (no, not right either, but nothing I call it seems correct) that I have had since I was a teenager. Might it be one that I stole from my parents when I headed for University, with dreams of working hard for my degree and keeping my teeth rigorously clean? And if this plastic container of dental floss is indeed 30 years old, is it still safe to use. Who knows what they put on dental floss back in the last century? It’s probably coated in asbestos or lead or something. Or its wax has turned to cyanide over the decades.
But it’s just a bit of string really isn’t it? It’s probably OK. It’s just terrifying to think how long I might have had it in my possession. It’s a few years at least. I can’t remember the last time I actually bought dental floss. Yet I still have loads of dental floss.
And what if it is a pot (no) that I took from home? Perhaps my parents were similarly optimistic about cleaning the gaps between their teeth, but had also lost interest when they realised the tedium of what that involved. The hard-sachet (nope) of dental floss might have been decades old when I purloined it. It may have been passed down the family for generations. It could be thousands of years old. Is it still safe to use? And if I am using it am I just depleting and damaging a valuable family heirloom? I could be throwing away thousands of pounds with every length of this ancient relic that I cover in tooth jizz and then chuck in the bin (though as a side note, dental floss has a semi-boomerang quality and whenever you try to chuck it, it seems to never entirely go in the bin, but hang over the edge of the bin like the stray emerging, white pubes of a bikini wearing German grandmother on a 1970s camping trip. If only I had married a German grandmother I would never have to shell out for dental floss again.
Though to be honest with my three remaining punnets (no) I have enough dental floss to keep the Herring family in dental floss until the year 2320.
