I withdrew the plastic shell and shut the medicine cabinet with a click. It was a sad medicine cabinet; ever since I had broken the previous mirror the hard way (thanks to a puddle of hand soap on the floor and a strong skull), I had repaired it as best I could.
Unfortunately, my best did not mean much, since by repairing it I meant installing a much smaller mirror taped to a cut-to-fit sheet of cardboard from a pizza box, which I read every time I opened the cabinet. In time it became a byword of my mind that John Schnatter sold his Camaro Z28 in order to sell pizzas from a bar. These thoughts drifted across my mind as I wrenched the object from its plastic enclosure and stared grimly at it.
“Hello, New Toothbrush,” I said quietly. “You are softer, and yet more bristly.” I puzzled over this paradox with a glassy eye, and my thoughts wandered to a home tips program I had watched on PBS, hosted by a fair-haired and enthusiastic British man, who gave advice on cleaning and tidying. Among using a denture toothbrush to clean grout (but never teeth, the bristles are too firm), I thought of sewing a button to a dishcloth to scrub stubborn stains with, and vacuum-bagging unneeded pillows. I then remembered that I had watched this program at the matured age of 12, swaddled in blankets on the couch in January and yet shivering, because the furnace was being fixed and it was cold enough to frost standing water in the sink.
Brushing off these hindering thoughts, I brushed my teeth and went to Beaner’s (Biggby if you’re nasty) to steal their wifi and download Moonbase Alpha and Alien Swarm. While I waited for the downloads to complete, I wrote this blog post.
THE END
