Brush

“How many times do you brush your teeth a day?” the dentist looming over us asked.

I was standing next to my older sister in the dentist’s office. We’d been waiting for a while. I’m not sure I’d actually been to a dentist before, but she had. My sister was three years older — so much more experienced than me.

Hearing the question, I immediately blurted out what I’d learned at school, “Three times a day!” I knew this one! I beamed with complete confidence at my response.

The dentist was smiling and nodding, pleasantly surprised, but my smile was wiped away by my sister. “You brush your teeth at school?” she asked, knowing perfectly well, I did not. The contradiction crashed in my head. We were told this rule, but I didn’t even have a toothbrush at school.

I was thinking about this story in the context of the role of observation when sussing out the idealized from reality; what we say we do vs. what we actually do. The right answer is three times a day, but as a second grader with only one toothbrush and a shared tube of toothpaste amongst four siblings, my reality was never going to match my intention, no matter how well I understood dental hygiene.

It was easy for my sister to punch a hole in my story. I hadn’t meant to lie to the dentist. If she hadn’t been there, I’d have gotten away with it, pleased as punch. Instead, I was told to try to brush my teeth after I arrived home from school with a sympathetic smile. I guess even dentists have older sisters.