In this cleaning frenzy, I noticed I have an abundance of toothbrushes. Last year, the dentist told me that when the blue on the toothbrush has faded, that it is an indicator that you need to replace it. This kind of wrecked my idea that you can brush your teeth with the same toothbrush you had when you were a kid. And then I started realizing how many germs have probably mated like rabbits and are now living in the toothbrush. Naturally, my reaction was to go and buy another toothbrush, and then another, and another. I found 5 toothbrushes in my toothbrush holder, and two more in the cabinet. Some of them had long since faded in their glorious, new blue, and others had only lightly been used.
As I tried to pull myself to throwing the old ones out, a strange sadness came over me as if I was going to throw out an old friend. This feeling is to be blamed on a particular incident in my childhood.
It all started with The Brave Little Toaster...
Whoever decided it was a good idea to tell a story to little kids about how inanimate objects have feelings of rejection when their owner gets rid of them is a definite way to produce hoarders. I remember watching it one day as a kid, and then going to my room and crying because I felt I had let down all my belongings. Ever since then, I would equally play with all my toys, and I would go through my closet and let each one of my pairs of shoes and clothing know that they were thought of that day. As I started to grow, it became an emotional experience when my mom would give away clothes that didn't fit anymore, or when she felt I had outgrown a particular toy. I would often take them out of the give away stack and sneak them back into my room.
My sister tried to help me along the way with my hoarding problem. I'll admit that I was never as bad as some of the people you see on TV, I like things to be open and clean, but I had a big problem of getting extremely sad and losing sleep on lost or given away items. I really felt that everything in the world had emotions like I do. It also makes it tough when cockroaches enter the picture. I normally feel really guilty if I kill them. But anyways, she would kind of help me say good-bye to objects, or help me to know when I really needed to get rid of things. I remember I saved every single paper )homework, drawings, notes, etc.) from kindergarten to high school, and then one day she came in and went through it all with me. She put logic and reason into the equation of why I didn't need to save it all, so it helped.
My sister is gone and married now, so I am left alone with the decisions of what to keep and what to throw out. Unfortunately everything is swayed by this childhood knowledge of life being like the Brave Little Toaster. I have learned to view the trashcan and give away piles as a kind of burial ground or nursing home, instead. I pretend that the objects have died or really old, so I either let them be buried, or send them away to a nursing home so they can be better taken care of and loved by even more people.
And this is where we come back to the toothbrushes. Of the 5 I had in the holder, 3 of them have been buried now. They were good toothbrushes, faithful to the very last bit of plaque. Even though they made my gums bleed sometimes, or my lack of really using them to their full potential, they will always be in our hearts. RIP toothbrushes. I will miss you.
This was just beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI had to do something special for them.
ReplyDelete