Not finished- we say so
The last things I wanted to do when I arrived home from work on Tuesday was to brush my teeth, take a bath and crawl into bed.
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Naa Atswei is on holidays at my mother-in-law’s and that for me is a big relief. She has become extremely active – terrible two they call it. But I doubt if all two-year old girls behave the way she does. She is a handful. And the things she can say! Gosh! She doesn’t understand the word “stop”.
Recently, I mistakenly left unattended, a pair of scissors I was cutting up stuff with. She picked it, cut off all the hair of her doll, and flashed the tresses in the toilet. The other day too, she tried forcing down our potty’s throat, a whole bundle of toilet roll.
Naa Atswei sleeps late these days. I don’t know why they make them sleep so much in school and free them to become heavily active in the night. Mmm. I am on real holiday.
So as I was saying, the last thing I wanted to do after a busy day’s work was to freshen up and sleep. When I looked in the tooth brush holder, there was no tooth paste. I checked the bathroom’s window sill to see if I could find it – wer dodge. “Agh, where could this tube be”, I soliloquised.
Then I thought of asking Daniel whether he had seen it. Daniel is a friend’s son who is in Accra from Cape Coast. His four day visit is to enable him attend a job interview. Scratching his head as he approached the bathroom he said, “oh, the toothpaste? It’s in the bin by the side of the toilet oooo. When I squeezed it this morning, I only got a little in the tube. Actually, it was finished so I threw it in that bin”.
“You what!” I yelled. That tube wasn’t that empty? Oh Daniel!” Fine, for Obodai and I, there was still a substantive amount of paste in that tube; enough for about five brushings. So what was Daniel talking about? Was he the one to determine which tube was empty or not? Agh, and I didn’t have a spare tube at home.
Not wanting our guest to feel bad, I tried phoning Obodai to buy one on his way home, but his phone was off. I just couldn’t reach him. How was I to pick the tube from the bin by the side of the potty? How? Ever since it got clogged from Naa Atswei’s misdeed, we’ve become weary of flushing down toilet rolls. We place them in that bin. How oooo how was I to pick it from the midst of those incredibly used rolls?
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A lump filled my throat. And this guest wasn’t too conversant with the selling spots in our area of residence. We had ‘dumsor’ too. Otherwise, I would have made him go buy one. But I wasn’t going to risk making him loose his way back home that night. I was so irked but couldn’t show it; didn’t want him to feel bad. And we seemed to have no other teeth cleaning agent in the house. Descending the flights of stairs in our apartment to go and buy one, for me, was no option either.
Thankfully, I had some baking soda in my cupboard. Scooping out a teaspoon of the powdery substance, I poured it into a small cup and mixed it with half a teaspoon of water to form a paste, and then dipped my toothbrush into the mixture to execute a good job. I could have alternatively dipped my brush into the powder straight away. But I loathe the taste of baking soda. The taste, for me, is too strong when I try tasting the powder. So well, I had to use the pasty option. Agh, Daniel.
A disappointed Obodai reluctantly did same when he got home late that night. We all, with pouted lips of concealed anger, did same the next morning before leaving home. Daniel himself was angry, I could tell, from the use of the soda. It was his first time.
Who's right is it, in my home, to determine if a toothpaste's tube is empty or not? I developed the skill of flatly emptying tooth paste tubes as early as age seven. As a child, we didn’t have too many options of keeping our teeth clean. The chewing sponge was our cavity polisher. And we used to envy the children of our village headmaster, Masupe and Nii Noi.
Their father used to buy toothpaste for use in their home. We would see them in the mornings, holding their cups of water and toothbrushes, showing off their teeth brushing skills at the back of their unwalled house. Our bedroom window overlooked the back of their house.
Every now and then, however, Masupe and Nii Noi, who were our playmates, would pass on to my two cousins and I, a used up tube of the teeth cleaning agent. We cherished those empty gifts. We didn’t have tooth brushes. But we would defy all odds, roll a round shaped bottle over the metal tube, and squeeze out every little bit of the tooth paste into our chewing sponges.
When the tube got flat, we would cut open the neck of the tubes, to scoop out the paste hiding around the neck of each tube. Those flat tubes could last the three of us, three consecutive brushings. That meant, if an individual were using that flat tube to brush his or her teeth once a day, it would last that individual nine brushings. We used to call that act of flattening out, "Prince Charles".
Masupe and Nii Noi once told us that was how their father referred to the act of squeezing everything out of tooth paste tubes. I don’t know how far true that myth about Prince Charles is. But they used to tell us that according to their father, Prince Charles, in all his glory, used up all the toothpaste in their tubes before discarding them.
This practice has stayed with me till date. Fortunately for me, the man I pledged my love to believes so much in this practice. So that makes the practice easy. No criticism; a bit on saving. C’est tout!