TOOTHPASTE CAUTION

Travel gives you a wonderfully terrible opportunity to experience new toothpastes. Travel tubes are difficult to find and they’re exactly non-existent in whatever big tube is your favorite brand and flavor. I might begin to think that this is a personal problem, which quite obviously it is, but what I mean is that maybe I’m the only one having it, like on every occasion I miss the bus filled with toothpaste samplers and get stuck on the package tour of dental deficiency. Except there’s no toothpaste in the homeless shelter either. There are clean socks, razors, miniature shaving creams and deodorants. Plus there’s everything everybody brings home from Vegas, like they’ve cleaned the housekeeping cart of Caesar’s Palace—little round soaps folded in tissue paper, salon brand lotions and enough shampoo in thumb-sized bottles to wash all the horses in the city. But there’s no toothpaste. Resorts and hotels don’t give it away, makers of fine soy mayonnaise don’t produce it, and the Colgate-Palmolive Company DOES expect you to put your money where your mouth is. Apparently. Now I know you’re not supposed to go swallowing great globs of toothpaste (just like you shouldn’t go licking walls with lead-based paint), but I’ve really not heard of freebasing fluoride. What could be the street value of point-eight-five ounces? Nevertheless, travel tubes of toothpaste are hard to come by, so I have to purchase whatever brand and whosever flavor is the smallest tube for my toiletries kit. In doing so, I have come across the following cautionary tales.

One: vanilla mint. Two flavors never intended to exist in any form of proximity and probably banned in combination in culinary schools the world over. Vanilla and mint are as well-suited for each other as garlic and anti-freeze.

Two: kids’ toothpaste. Kids’ toothpaste comes in temptingly small containers, easily packable, and in non-revolting flavors. Today’s pediatric dental hygiene is nothing like the Altoids’ effect of my childhood brushing. So you arrive in the city of your corporate meeting to work closely with colleagues who remark, “Gee, you breath is so super splash kiwi berry!” Furthermore, kids’ toothpaste is not pasty. It’s made as a dual-tasking substance: a mouthwash and toothpaste. (Are you supposed to swish it?) The downfall is that you pour it on your toothbrush and it runs all over the sink basin, then swags from there up to your mouth via the toothbrush, but falls away to make smears on the floor for you to step in. Very little of it gets to your teeth, but it is a comprehensive bathroom cleanser. For a product targeted for children, who are a notoriously messy demographic, why would you manufacture a substance which promotes greater widespread cleanup for mothers and fathers across America? The only worse thing I can think of is liquid bubble gum.

Three: Pro-Health. Anything left over in the toothpaste factory one day went into this tube—baking soda, tartar control, teeth whitening, gum sensitivity, and Joe’s tuna fish sandwich. It’s medicinal all right, with as much taste appeal as dry wall dust. You certainly wouldn’t mistake it for recreational purposes. It is supposed to fight cavities, gingivitis, gonorrhea, the Vikings, and has been used in Voodoo worship to ward off Donald Trump. Believe me, you put this in your mouth and nothing wants to live there, including your tongue. The health value, I fear, is compromised by the overwhelming desire to lick creosote telephone poles after brushing. I’d just as soon stick mothballs up my nose, but I’m not sure that would pass homeland security.