One of the most traumatic experiences from my childhood involved using the wrong toothbrush. My parents were thrifty and bought us one Sonicare toothbrush and gave us each a color-coded brush head. My older sister had blue, I had green, my younger sister had red, and the youngest had yellow. We had to take turns brushing our teeth, but that wasn’t a big deal because we all went to bed at different times. One day I saw my older sister using the green brush head, and I got mad and told her that the green one was mine. She denied it and said that I had the blue one and that she had been using the green one ever since we got it. I picked up the blue brush head and saw that the bristles were untouched and that it had never been used. I felt sick to my stomach. It’s bad enough if you find out that someone used your toothbrush once without you knowing. It’s much worse to find out that you’ve been sharing the same toothbrush with someone else, especially when it’s your sister. I felt dirty. I still do. I can’t look my sister in the eye to this day.
Critically Rated at 3/17
Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young
criticallyrated 