I hear you, we don’t need one day to recognize our love for each other.
But I wasn’t exactly feeling it last Wednesday when you told me beige wasn’t my best color.
Or when you asked me to rub your belly while you ate chicken wings.
Or when we spent our date night using Turbo Tax.

It’s not about forced gift giving because I don’t get you anything other than a card.
So yes, it is exactly like our anniversary.
The only difference is that you can actually remember the date.

I don’t need anything big or sparkly.
Unless you want to give me something big or sparkly.
Because I was actually lying when I said I didn’t need anything big or sparkly.

Whatever you do, just don’t get me apparel.
The last time you went down this road it ended with an XL T-shirt that read “Chicago Girl”
Which was weird since I’m from Arizona.
And we lived in New York.
I’ve only ever been to Chicago a few times for work.

How about a cleaning lady?
I realize the day is meant to commemorate love.
But my love for her would be deep and abiding.
And maybe even sexual if she disinfects sinks.

I haven’t forgotten the ice cream maker you bought me.
That was a wonderful gift.
Because I’d been thinking I’d like to dedicate more time to churning.
It proved useful as I needed a storage solution for my shoes.

I noticed on Facebook that your friend Drew designed a Scavenger Hunt Of Love for his wife.
It doesn’t matter if everyone thinks Drew is actually gay.
He’s gay and really good at footwear and choosing TV series and at Valentine’s Day.
No, sending me a request to join you in Words With Friends is not the same.

It’s fine that you have to work late.
The kids made me some shit out of construction paper.
And I bought myself a sheet cake.
The frosting reads, “I’d Still Do You.”
I’m gonna spend my night eating it and dancing like Nell.

—-

(Happy Valentine’s Day, friends. I hope you like your Rite Aid chocolate. xxoo)

I clipped your car when pulling into the spot beside you. There’s no damage other than a scuff, but people are staring so I want them to believe I am leaving you my insurance information with this note.

Sorry about that.

My best friend from college wrote this note.  When he confessed the incident in a dorm room that he first swept for wiretaps, I sat there dumb-struck. I withdrew a big breath and bowed my head. I looked up, met his anxious gaze, and uttered slowly, “That is the most brilliant thing I have ever heard.”

This note represented a new benchmark in ingenuity and problem solving. My husband, G, thought it signaled a new low in bad judgment and thought my friend should have hired a defense attorney and a gondolier to ferry him through Hell’s waters. He also makes no secret of his belief that gondola should hold a second bench and some antiperspirant for my questionably principled self.

It’s not that I don’t aspire to higher ethics. I watch those movies in which the protagonist does something self-sacrificing and pious, like stand between a wounded goat and a crew of teenagers throwing rocks at it, and wish I would respond as bravely. Have you noticed that the most compelling scenes are always in foreign movies? The citizens of other countries must have a more tightly wound moral compass than Americans. Or a strong reverence for goats. It’s not that I hate goats; I certainly wouldn’t want to hit one with my rickshaw, but I’m not likely to intervene in an adrenaline-fueled goat pelting session. I would call the police if my cell phone hadn’t been left behind in the market I’d just been to, but let’s face it, it would have been and retracing my steps through goat-execution terrain sounds unappealing.

I suppose I’m saying that even though G and I are both American, he’d assimilate well in a foreign country because he’d intercede to save that goat. He’d probably even do it in a way that would have the attackers shake their heads in remorse before they all shared a round of imported beer raised in a toast to goats around the world. Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t turn my back completely on that goat. I’d be the one to hide out in an alley until the goons were gone. Then I’d bring that broken goat back to my house to live in our yard. While I wouldn’t demand a cease-fire in the heat of the moment, I’d be the asshole putting a plate of G’s beef tenderloin out for that goat and organizing a public speaking tour to raise awareness for the plight of goats.

I am not a beacon in an altercation. I become as silent as Charlie Chaplin when matters become confrontational. Once on an airplane that was approaching the runway for landing, a man in the row of seats in front of us made a call on his cell phone. G requested that man hang up the phone immediately. When the man tossed him a glare and a snide remark, G stood up righteously, like Denzel Washington in every movie he ever stars in, and demanded he hang up his phone in consideration of the safety of all the other passengers onboard. People clapped for him while I cowered in my seat with the realization I would have chosen death by fireball and crushed fuselage over confronting that man myself. Instead of words of gratitude, I muttered, “Fasten your seatbelt and return your seatback to its full and upright position, for God’s sake.”

I dread the occasions that G accompanies us to the store because it is without fail that I or one of the kids will open our car door too forcibly, sending it crushing into the side of the neighboring car. My door-dings are never quiet transgressions either; They have a domino effect by which my door slams the car beside me, which then slams the car beside it, and so on until every damn car in the lot has been dented. Fearing the owner of the car will hoist a large crossbow from his trunk and shoot me at close range, my reaction is to load each kid back into the car seat, drive quickly away, and vow penitently to never return to that market. G, on the other hand, would probably have the car owner paged over the loudspeaker while I plead in his ear, “We have a red car. They have a white car.  That makes pink…which is…happy!  Everyone loves pink because it makes them happy. For the love of Christ, let’s leave! Happy!”

I backed into a MAC truck while attempting to parallel park recently. When striking a truck that weighs more than a herd of elephants, you can safely assume the only vehicle that received damage is yours. With that kernel of wisdom and physics, I began to cry violently while scrambling for the gear shift to high-tail it out of there. G hissed something about being a role model to children and forced me to wait until the truck driver returned. When he did arrive, I tried to explain, but only a croak and the word ‘Monsieur’ came out of my mouth. Evidently I believe truck drivers like to be addressed by formal French titles when being begged for forgiveness. G finally came to my aid with his command of the English language. He explained that his wife – and he used the word ‘wife’ like I was a mail order candidate gone horribly wrong -  hit his truck upon attempting a parallel park – and he used air quotations around ‘parallel park’ as though to signal that only those equipped with a penis should attempt to perform this maneuver. The burly truck driver looked me up and down, while I bowed my head and said “Monsieur” one more time, and snickered.

“I don’t see a thing.”  He winked at me, “Never happened.”

As I crawled back into the passenger seat, swearing to never drive again, I looked at G smugly and said, “An anonymous note of contrition with no insurance information would have been easier.” As he pulled away he gave me that ‘your gondola to Hell awaits’ look he has perfected.

It’s a big undertaking to perform live in front of your town, and it’s something that I don’t take lightly. In weak moments, I have found myself wondering, “What if the mailman refuses to deliver mail to me anymore?” or “What if they refuse to let me buy groceries until I say ‘scallops’ the way they do here?” In bolder stretches of time, I remind myself that I have had to endure much more humiliating things in this small town. Family Swim at the YMCA, for example.

Show up for a laugh. I promise you’ll get one. I’m going to be covering the big topics: life, liberty, and the pursuit of better pubic hair. I’m going to answer how I came to Maine and how everyone else came to Maine. And I’m going to teach you some really handy lessons in communication with your spouse.

And no one – including me – has to wear a bathing suit or say ‘scallops’ any other way than they know how.

- Stop trying to look like Kim Kardashian and just look like Kim Kardashian.

- Secure a multi-million dollar recording contract.

- Wear less: urine, Spanx, food in my teeth, Medium stickers on my shirts, and hairties that got lost in my hair.

- Wear more: zipped pants.

- Scream less: For the love of everything holy, can we get through a goddamn doorway faster than the Texas A&M marching band?

- Also scream less: This laundry room is about to see an NHL lockout situation!

- Leave less iPads on the front lawn.

- Take Savannah Guthrie’s job. So we don’t have to hear the name Savannah anymore.

- Eat more: meals at the table.

- Eat less: In the bathroom and in general.

- Learn to ask where a lot of things are instead of just the pharmacy in Spanish.

- Learn where all the cowboy’s have gone.

- Make Rick Moranis famous again.

- Stop clicking: my nails and links entitled “Shark Tank Explodes Inside Mall In China.”

- Dabble in the exotic large animal trade. Except Silver Backs; They seem temperamental.

- Watch that Jessica Simpson movie that grossed $24 bucks and some Swedish Fish sales.

- Popularize hand signals while driving.

- Visit a polar ice cap. And stop them from melting.

- Visit a fiscal cliff. And stop things from falling off it.

- Bear witness to a Sea World orca trainer attack.

- Gather Hilary Clinton’s hair into a high ponytail.

- Stop eating food off the free sample plates and pretending I didn’t know they were 90% covered in pee.

- Wonder less about why I bought a Jennifer Convertibles sofa.

- Perfect my Diane Rehm voice.

- Talk to my Navy Seal brother over Skype without signing off, “You know, I was the favorite child before you had to go become a national emblem of heroism. But whatever. I still have better hair.”

- Campaign for Obama’s re-election.

- Remove ‘refried beans’ from the Special Skills section of my resume.

—

Also, I’m performing live at the Camden Opera House on January 26th. Buy your tickets online and come to the show. I’m gonna teach you some stuff; You’ll never be the same.

–

If you have traveled with children, you already know that a Mexican drug mule, carrying cocaine in his small intestine, fording the Rio Grande under the gunfire of Arizona cowboys has an easier time getting from point A to point B. The endless hours trapped within a Jeep with three humans determined to destroy each other was eerily reminiscent of Nicholas Cage’s window seat aboard Con-Air.

The trip did improve upon arrival.  We booked our stay at a mega hotel in Times Square, which was a strange experience for once locals.  Our room towered above buildings, overlooking all of the shoebox apartments we ever lived in while Beauty & The Beast blinked neon through our window. While walking through Times Square used to give rise to fantasies of strangling myself with the camera strap of a Japanese tourist, the proximity to Central Park and Toys R Us proved to be valuable now that we have children. The most convenient aspect to our hotel’s coordinates was the closeness to Hell’s Kitchen, the neighborhood Greg lived in when we began dating, which then became my home once we were engaged. We had our first date at Central Park.  Our second date was to an Irish Pub where he forced me to play pool and to embarrass myself by inquiring if a vegetarian could get the Mash sans the Bangers. We once got into a ludicrous fight on the streets which culminated with him bellowing, “You suck, Erin!” while I gave him the finger with one hand and hailed a taxi with the other.  It was these tender memories that inspired me to create an homage to our early years together.

While children napped, nestled with bed bugs, I charted an Anniversary Scavenger Hunt.  I created clues, complete with rhyming verse, to lead him to significant sites from our courtship. Within each clue’s envelope, I included one of his favorite chocolate bars since this anniversary is traditionally denoted by candy.  When I licked the seal on the final clue, I sat back beaming with pride at my creativity and romanticism. It was a strange feeling to be armed with a gift before my mother had to call to remind me of my anniversary and to tell me it’s not too late to wrap myself in cellophane. Kathy Bates, no more!  I was the Mayflower of Love, without the scurvy.  The Titanic of Affection, without the iceberg and that damn Canadian singing on my helm. I was Danielle Flippin’ Steele this year.

The morning of our anniversary, while seated in a swanky Brasserie beside French children who made ours look like American trash from a Kid Rock video, I gave Greg the first clue.  He seemed confused by the Shakespearean-like prose my clever brain devised.  Rather than saving the chocolate bar as a piece of this very intricate puzzle I had created, he immediately unsheathed and ate it.  He ate the whole Rollos bar, which was irritating not only because we were mid-omelet but because opening candy in front of our kids is like pitching a bucket of chum into shark-infested waters.  He figured the first site out effortlessly and we walked briskly there to collect clue #2. The next clue alluded to the ‘house that Jack BILT’, which was a play on words for the building we lived in, The Biltmore, which was built by the Jack Parker Corporation. This is a detail I wouldn’t expect any of you to understand, but I lived with this man in this building for 2 years. We got engaged in this building.  During the great power blackout of 2003, we thought we were going to rot to death in this building.

As he stared blankly at the clue, muttering incoherently about baseball stadiums, I began to realize there is a reason those wedding shows always depict the man arranging a scavenger hunt for the woman. We’re good at these things. We retain meaning.  We have memories.  You show us a dirty sock and it reminds us of the time we were sick in bed with pneumonia and you came over and washed our clothes while flipping the channel between Oxygen and the Sundance Channel as we slurped Ramen Noodles because even though they’re unhealthily high in sodium and remind us of collegiate poverty, they make us feel better when we’re sick. Of course there’s also the fact that we love to wear socks at nighttime in California because even though it’s a temperate climate, it gets a little chilly after dark, and you came to meet our family there during the Christmas holiday, and you stared deep into our eyes while sitting on the lawn of the Spanish Mission when you both realized you were going to get married.  While we were wearing socks!  See what I mean?  We get this shit.  We own this shit.

After having to reveal the answer to him, we rushed through the remaining clues – even skipping one altogether – because the kids were starting to revolt in their strollers and we had clearly reached a level of sentiment Greg can only rise to when watching Top Gun.  As I packed our belongings away, once back at the hotel, I noticed two clues lay crumpled in the waste basket.  I discovered another tossed haphazardly on the bathroom counter.  He was not going to save these professions of love, these nuggets of poetry written on hotel stationary. I didn’t expect him to start a scrapbook for all his friends to witness our love story, but I had hoped for a little more reverence than this.

This is a man who has saved every T-ball shirt he ever wore, every ticket stub from a game he attended, every piece of junk mail addressed to him. This is a man who saved a card from his grandmother in which she referred to our children by incorrect names. He doesn’t allow me to throw away lone socks in case – miraculously – its mate reappears after attending Sockapalooza years later. He still has Hooters T Shirts collected from college.  He has a Pez dispenser from Easter of 1984 in a drawer. I’m quite sure he would save the rind of cheese if I didn’t throw it away, and I’m still expecting to stumble upon a mason jar filled with his toenail clippings one day.

It may have taken eight years – or 40, depending on who is doing the math – but I have learned my lesson.  I have learned that I am better off buying another blue shirt from Brooks Brothers or writing out an IOU for a massage I’ll administer for 45 seconds before falling asleep.

Whatever I do, Mom, you’re going to need to issue that reminder call next year.

I have been thinking that I’d like to go back to church. It’s been a vague desire in my mind for a few years, but one that has been amplified lately by the increasingly verbal state of my children. I cringe every time they wrongly identify a church as a school, a cross as a plus sign, or a priest as a Knight of the Round Table. I knew that we were really in spiritual arrears when I overheard my oldest say about the supposed son of God, “Do you know why they called him Cheesus? Because he loved cheese.”

I didn’t want to tell him that he was wrong because it’s possible that Jesus did love cheese. He loved a lot of things after all. I tend to favor the cheeses that hail from France or Spain, but Bethlehem might have been a glimmering bastion of dairy for all I know. I am certain it smelled like it anyway.

The problem with returning to church is that I don’t know how. I’ve fallen away from the Catholic church, the faith in which I was indoctrinated to the ways of the divine and the mysterious. The fissures began the way they do for all youths on the brink of adulthood. Too little time. Too much sleeping till noon. Too many friends luring you into misadventures. Too few mothers to steer you back toward the straight and narrow. The complete break with the church happened when I learned that the priest whose booming sermons had reverberated inside my eardrums for most of my life had been charged with sexual misconduct with young boys. My entire religious inculcation was defrauded with one glance at his mugshot emblazoned across the paper. This was different than the times the facade had crumbled before, revealing the Wizard of Oz within. When Milli Vanilli was exposed as lip-synching, I kept their tape in my boom box for another couple of years. I couldn’t do the same with the Catholic church.

It didn’t help that they’d stopped serving donuts after the Sunday masses either.

I have since been to church for the occasional Catholic wedding. It’s unavoidable when one has a disproportionate number of Italian and Latino friends. But there is a comfortable anonymity in sitting before a priest I will never again hear in a church that I will never again visit. Attending these weddings is a stark reminder of how far down the totem pole of priorities religion has slipped. I no longer know the hymns by heart and I’m always a beat behind the other parishioners in the never-ending rituals of standing and sitting and kneeling. My husband, who grew up in a household devoid of any traditional religion, is certainly no mentor in matters of genuflection and signing of the cross. When the people in the pews stood to receive the sacrament at the last wedding we attended, G whispered, “Hey, I’m hungry. Grab me one.”

And so I’ve become that modern phenomenon of spiritual but not religious. I don’t know what that means, however, since all of my spiritual beliefs are unavoidably clothed in the religious trappings I was exposed to. It seems to mean, for the lot of us, that we believe in a higher power but we’d rather go to brunch as opposed to church on Sunday morning. That probably also explains why I see God in the flaky crust of pastries. It means we want to go to Heaven, if there is one, because Hell, if there is one, sounds really unpleasant. It means we prescribe to the notions of good will toward man, but we can’t actually summarize the Commandments beyond don’t do anything weird with your neighbor.  We know who Jesus is and some of his great works, but Peter, Paul, and Mary are just members of an aging folk band.

This time of year especially, though, and even more so in the shadow of a grisly crime directed at the most innocent of our race, I am feeling like being spiritual but not religious is not doing much for my enlightenment. It’s like being on Weight Watchers but never counting points, which is a sin I am also guilty of. I want to believe in my spirituality and the idea that I can revel in God at any turn and in any place. I’d like to think that I am capable of teaching my kids about the invincible force of love, and the cohesiveness of community, and the salve of kindness apart from the dogmatic shrieks of false prophets.

But I also want answers from someone who sees more clearly and devotedly than I. I need to look upon the face of someone whose eyes are not ensconced with the glaze of doubt that covers mine. I need to hear from a person who can claim insight into the human condition that feels entirely alien to me at this moment.

Mostly I need my kids to see a cross and know it to be the emblem of something bigger than mathematics.

And, Cheesus Christ, I need some donuts.

—

- Is chocolate really, really bad for dogs? Or is that more of a personal choice?

- Do you really allow the kids to watch Basic Instinct? I probably should have asked you this 122 minutes ago.

- The kid up the street came over and I heard him telling Jimmy that the school nurse found some moving white stuff in his hair with a pencil today.

- Do you know your neighbor’s wireless password? Network is PadThaiPorno.

- I didn’t feed them because I was worried they might be gluten-free, nut-free, cassein-free, and wheat-free.

- The king bed upstairs isn’t for all of them to sleep in because that’s what they said before they all feel asleep in it…?

- I didn’t realize Michael Bolton had a Greatest Hits album.

- They’d told me they’d never tried Red Bull and I saw a real teaching moment there.

- You did know that I am not CPR certified?

- The carbon monoxide detector kept beeping so I just banged it with the end of the mop till it stopped.

- I said that I charge $5 an hour but that was before we’d established that your kid likes to play Candyland for 3 hours straight and that you don’t have a dishwasher.

- Emma has a boy over, who she said was her Spanish tutor, which I’m assuming to be true since I keep hearing “mi amor” coming from her bedroom.

- What color is their vomit normally?

- If it’s not too much to ask, could you not drink too much, Mrs. Williams, so you could drive me home because Mr. Williams always asks me uncomfortable questions that start with, “I don’t know what your proclivities are…”

- Could we discuss a diarrhea-based hourly raise?

- How is ‘blunt head trauma’ really defined? Related: Your countertops are really much higher and more slippery than normal ones.

- It would have been nice if you could have left money for the pizza delivery man because I had to pay him in gold from your jewelry case.

—

(Crazy texts from your babysitter?)

–

I’m sure they come in all makes and models, but in my limited experience with mediums, they only look like Whoopi Goldberg. Yet this friend of mine looks nothing like Whoopi Goldberg. Or even Nicole Goldberg, who I knew in high school and who always had so much gossip on the rest of us that I sometimes wondered if she might be clairvoyant. It was startling to me and disrupted my grasp of space-time to learn that my decidedly non-Whoopi-nor-Nicole-Goldberg-looking friend is a clairvoyant.  The experience is similar to that jarring scenario in which you find yourself walking beside someone you know pretty well when they suddenly light up a cigarette and you had no idea they smoked. You want to play it cool, like maybe you, too, smoke and no one knows about it, but you just can’t stop staring and coughing in between pauses in the conversation.

The way I came to realize her post was what really stopped me short. It just came up casually in conversation. And no one freaked out. Everyone behaved as though she’d said she was a caterer or a public safety officer. I only have to mention that I used to work for the company that created Gossip Girl and at least 3 women fall to the floor in an immediate seizure. I once was at a cocktail party at which a man introduced himself as a professional puppeteer and in no time at all people were handing him throw pillows and salt shakers and asking him to make characters out of them. I even once shared an apartment with a stripper, a revelation that draws gasps all around. I soon came to overlook her occupation given she knew the best places to get a burrito in the middle of the night. The point is that while these jobs may seem unique, anyone can do them with a little work or some exotic oils. These people are not born with a gift.

In truth, I didn’t respond in grandiose fashion either. But that was because I was intensely preoccupied with the worry that she knew I wasn’t wearing underwear. Later in the week, after I had time to compose myself and to launder some undergarments, I approached her about it in the schoolyard. I broached the topic distractedly, in that casual way one might try to get the Dermatologist at a party to eyeball an errant mole without having to book an appointment. I waited for her to transmute before me into a Madame Slovinka, swirling her fingers atop her crystal ball. Instead she fished a business card out of the middle consul of her car and pressed it into my hand. At the moment our hands collided, I expected a jolt, an unfurling of images, at once familiar and new, to shudder through my mind’s eye. As I turned, it occurred to me that just because it hadn’t happened to me didn’t mean it hadn’t happened to her.

I called back over my shoulder, “I just might call you.”

Climbing into my own car,  I wondered if she already knew that I would. And that I would make sure to wear underwear when I did.

Despite my piqued curiosity to know what she sees when she looks at me, I haven’t called her. I suppose I’m afraid of what I might learn from her. Never one to look away from a roadside crash or a naked celebrity picture gone viral, I’m concerned that I won’t be judicious in parsing what I would benefit from knowing and what should remain mysterious to me. I’m stricken with a wave of panic when the receptionist at the dentist asks me if I’d like to book the date for my next cleaning six months from now. I can only imagine my dread at the foreknowledge of far-off cataclysmic life events.

And, above all, I’m terrified that I’ll start doing bra-less pottery and listening to Unchained Melody.

—

A calculator to tally everyone’s caloric intake. Write the total on each person’s hand with a red pen and a wince.

A life-size cardboard cutout of the deformed guy from Goonies for everyone to genuflect before and feel thankful they don’t look like him.

A party mix that includes the best of the Ying Yang twins.

A horn of plenty spilling over with hamsters.

The Williams-Sonoma catalog to compare against the table your host has set. Rub your temples and mutter, “The mediocrity some people will accept…”

Bring a baby no one knows and pretend it’s yours and that it’s named Pocahontas.

A slideshow of the people you met at a nudist retreat in Key West.

Espresso sundaes for your hyperactive nephews.

A hammer with a note attached that reads, “You’d better hide, Mannheim Steamroller CD.”

Those letters of the alphabet stocking hooks to spell out W-E-I-R-D-O-S on the mantle.

Bring your sister’s ex-fiance and yell, “Surprise! Guess who’s gotten over his fidelity issues?!”

A pair of scissors to dole out group Miley Cyrus haircuts.

A bucket of names for the Christmas lottery but declare that you’ve “left Grandpa out intentionally since no one wants to deal with another whittled bear figurine.”

Some pitbull puppies you were traded for expired canned goods.

The Cindy Crawford exercise DVD. Every time someone gets up for seconds, shout, “You go do this in the basement and don’t come back until you look good in a mole and a red one-piece bathing suit!”

The bags of leaves you’ve raked from your own yard. Scatter them wildly around your host’s front lawn, chanting, “From my home to yours!”

The carcasses of dead animals found along the drive. Look at everyone like they’re crazy and say, “We’re eating local, people! Low carbon footprint this year.”

—

“You have the same X-rays as the truckers I get in here who are drinking Monster all day long.”

My jaw fell open or at least as open as a jaw can fall when held in traction by flying buttresses of cotton rolls and clamps. I shook my head vehemently, desperately trying to convey non-verbally that I never drink soda nor have I driven an 18-wheeler. He began dismantling the hardware inside my mouth so that I could offer a spoken rebuttal to his cruel assessment of my teeth. My mind roiled with citations of flossing and usage of ADA-approved toothpaste and assertions of sugar-free gum. While I meant to verbalize all these things, when the last clip was lifted from my mouth, something more along the lines of, “How dare you? I’m wearing a cardigan,” escaped my lips.

He waved in reinforcements in the way of hygienists who began silently mixing concoctions and placing shiny metal objects upon the sinister tray hovering above my heart. He pressed my shoulders into the plastic of the reclined chaise and gazed into my eyes with an intensity that made me fear I was seated in the chair of the demon barber of Fleet Street.

“Some people inherit a condition that makes their mouths an overly acidic environment,” he began slowly. “Do you have any questions?”

I thought for a moment.

“So this is my mom’s fault then?”

He snapped his gloves into place and asked his harem of hygienists for the swab. He dredged the shallows of my mouth with a cotton swab before dipping the wet end into a small desktop machine. He clucked his tongue and dropped his head in defeat at the digital readout.

“A good number is anything under 500. Do you know what yours is?”

I’ve never been good with numbers. At a conference, I once guessed a jar held 45 gumballs when the actual total was something like 500.

“Your number is 7,000.”

I winced at the number and the judgment that hung heavy in the air. I shrank into the seat much like the time my college counselor had told me I was lucky I had scored so high in the Reading and Writing sections of the SAT because my Math performance had been downright simian. My dentist nodded solemnly at his staff, a silent cue which sent them scuttling toward cabinets and supply closets. I ran my tongue over my teeth, recoiling at the thought of seven thousand grams or milliliters or knots of crud tumbling off my teeth like a rock dislodging from a scraggy mountain.

They returned holding a tote bag packed to the gills with products. A veritable suitcase of cleaners and rinses that no TSA official would grant passage to. I was discharged minutes later, tote in hand, after paying a sum of money I only hand over for products that counteract aging, not acid development. I lugged my baggage to the door. I turned to the counter around which the entire staff of the dental office seemed to be perched, watching my exit. I dropped the bag to the floor before striding quickly back across the waiting room.

“I just want to understand,” I faltered. “Do I need to use these products forever?”

My eyes darted from face to face of the employees before me, desperately seeking enlightenment and comfort. After an interminable silence, one voice spoke for the rest.

“If you want what’s best for your teeth.”

I lifted my chin and straightened my cardigan as though to remind them one last time that I was a lady regardless of the fact that my mouth was the Wilt Chamberlain of bacteria. I turned away from them and hobbled upon leaden legs toward the door, pausing to collect my bag of products, a maneuver that required the use of leg muscles instead of back ones to lift.

Once home, I opened the bag to inspect the bottles within. There were rinses, spritzes, pastes, and strips. To dig a little deeper revealed measuring cups and mixing sticks. Then I spied the thing that sent me over the edge: Chewing gum.

I had become one of those people with their own special chewing gum. This is a far worse fate than being one of those people who carries their own salad dressing. Because no one ever watches the person who carries their own salad dressing and says, “Oh man, could I have some of that?”

I felt a sob coming on, but I stopped short for fear that the tears made in my body of uneven pH would be like acid rain. I didn’t want to wind up looking like Seal and being the person who can’t share her special gum. After all, it’s going to be tough enough to hold onto my friends once I have to spend my evening hours shocking my mouth like they do the YMCA pool after a toddler craps in it.

—