BrushWorks

Toothpaste is pretty damn unsanitary. I realized this with a new vengeance recently while brushing my teeth. Bleary-eyed and half-asleep, I had squirted too much of the stuff onto my toothbrush and found myself trying to scrape the excess back into the tube. I awoke with a start when I saw what I was doing. All those nasty little microbes, exfoliated off each toothbrush with painful accuracy back onto the tube for the next user.

What mildly alarms me is how prevalent and widely accepted this practice is. Which makes me find my mother's otherwise anal policies on hygiene kind of ironic. We will regularly trade off oral bacteria seething from the remains of our daily diet but she insists that I change my clothes and remove my shoes immediately upon entering the house.

"Hypocrisy!" my inner voice cries. But secretly, I have been a member of the secret society of the Obsessively Hygienic for quite some time now.

The rearing of the compulsively clean begins at a young age. Little tykes are shuttled relentlessly from the outdoors to the sacred Inside of the House by a whirlwind of a mother that whisks every molecule of dirt off their bodies. "Take your shoes off!" sounds the battle cry.

And so begins the war on the germs of Other People. Where I come from, cleanliness is not an option. It's a way of life.

Things changed once I got out of the Inside, however. I found College life isn't particularly friendly to the compulsively clean. Friends and mere acquaintances feel at liberty to fling their polluted bodies onto the pristine haven of my bed without regard for my well-being. Shoes track dirt into the dorm room and there is no reining them in. I find myself sharing cups and utensils with people I have known only for a span of months. Three years of this nerve-wracking activity and I am hanging on by a neatly-trimmed fingernail. What can I do to fight the power? I feel vulnerable for the first time. And I hate it.

So how do I reconcile the moral dilemma of shared toothpaste with my ingrained compulsive ways? I ask my roommates for help. "Give it up," they say. Is it that easy? They begin a training program that includes jumping on my bed daily, borrowing my clothes and using my soap. "We'll cure you in no time," they assure me confidently, scattering dust bunnies around the room. I cringe at first; such annoying girls! What horrible friends! I question the health of our relationship. But the dirty life becomes easier with each passing day, and the state of my room and the germ level of my hands become less precious to me.

I'm being rehabilitated of my dangerous liaison with cleanliness. It's all my mother's fault, I think bitterly as I board the plane to head home for a weekend. "Hi, Bonnie," my mother's singsong voice greets me at the airport. Inescapably, I smile back and hug her, feeling guilty for my transgressions. And somehow, despite my rigorous regimen at school, my closet Obsessive Hygienist still runs free at home.

Bonnie Tsui '99 lives in Winthrop House and will be happy to brush her teeth over Thanksgiving.