Gumline

Fingers hooked behind a small metal tab. With a gentle yank, two sets of magnets are pulled apart, the modest mirrored door swinging to one side. I  don't know whether or not you'd call me a dick for sniping the more  advantageous utilities in my dorm room before my roommate even had a  chance to pick his, but hey, first come first served and all that. And our split is technically fair. The number of outlets on either side is...  Mostly even. But hey, I brought me tower; he only has a laptop to deal with. And it just wouldn't make sense giving the guy that brought the TV the side of the room that didn't have the coaxial hookup. And although my closet space is objectively larger, I did bring damn near half of my entire library, several suits, and assorted crap that I can't live without. It's not like he ever uses that fencing gear of his, anyway.

The shelf space in out medicine cabinet was also an even split, though I *had* taken the convenient lower shelves. I feel like any other setup would be an outright waste of resources, as I use the cabinet far more often than he does. And although the contrast isn't nearly as drastic as it is with my other friends, he does technically have a height advantage on me.

Wasting no time I grabbed my toothbrush wrought in white plastic and dark blue rubber and softened the bristles with a brief blast of cold water.  Conservation minded as I've become, I turned off the faucet and grabbed my tube of toothpaste with my free hand. It was almost full, as just a few weeks prior I had finally used up my last tube. Old boy had served me proudly though and entire fall semester of diligent daily dental duties.  That semester had been Aquafresh, as I recall. This semester was Colgate.  Not your bargain brand bollocks, no sir. Appealing metallic colored tube, flashy branding, *dentist recommended* formula, *and* bonus breath strips right there in the paste. This was the good stuff.

I brushed my teeth twice a day without fail, with a few exceptions here and there on late weekend nights. This was a habit in its infancy, however, but as I've learned if there is any hackneyed bit of sage advice that consistently defies its nature again and again, it's "Better late than never." My teeth weren't stained from outright abuse, but years of passive neglect. I've found that habits, though hard to break, are easy to form if you're in the right environment. Though I've been a victim of sloth for my entire life, college seemed to be getting me to brush my teeth, exercise, and eat right. For the most part.

I gently squeezed the bottom of the tube of toothpaste. My fingers clenched the acute angle in a slightly awkward way, making my hand feel tactless. Nonetheless a pea sized glob of dentifrice was squeezed out onto the awaiting bristles. Dark blue, semi-translucent. I could see a few of the breath strips encased in the abrasive. No false advertising here; this toothpaste was a professional.

Opening my mouth I lay the business end of the brush on the bottom right corner of my mouth. I don't know about other people, but I can't possible brush my teeth without a certain distinct rhythm to it. Not an order, per se (Though that's an unchanging constant as well), but a feeling for a certain beat. A subtle music that I can only hear when I'm doing something as simple and repetitive as brushing my teeth. I began scrubbing my enamel, starting first with the molars.

The rhythm that would repeat itself fourteen times began with vigor.  Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-doowop. Over and over again. Once for bottom right, bottom left, top right, top left, and so on until I reached the front of my mouth and turned straight back to do it all over again, but in reverse order. One by one, with no tooth left untouched. It was the least I could for my thirty-two favorite little buddies. Given all my years of consistent abuse through neglectful  oral hygiene procedures, gallons upon gallons of soft drinks, and a  certain fascination with caramel that borders on erotic, I had plenty to  make up to them.

The head of my brush was now covered in light teal foam, the aftermath of a brushing well deserved. I spat out the bubbly base and rinsed the head of my brush. I casually wiped the dental lather from my lips and cleaned my hand on the leg of my sleep pants. It didn't stain, it didn’t even mark. The head of my brush now clean I flipped the grip turnways in my hand and brought the business end of the built in tongue scraper to my mouth muscle. I had only learned at the beginning of the fall semester how crucial a tongue scraper was to maintaining good dental hygiene. I began busying myself with removing the unsightly grime that builds up every night and day, rinsing the scraper as I completed my campaign on each section of the tongue. I was a beat cop taking in the grime and the slime, only to return to the streets the night thereafter to find more scum of the slums taking their place. A never-ending battle, but someone had to take a stand.

I've been told that starting to floss is as difficult as quitting smoking. Or perhaps it's the other way around. I wouldn't know, for as cool as smoking can make someone, I'm one of those pretentious musicfags that values the sanctity of his voice too highly to risk it for anything.  Thankfully I had invested in a few packages of these newfangled "floss picks." You know the plastic ones that you toss after every use? That made the transition all the simpler. Baby steps and all that, as Bob once told me. I closed the medicine cabinet, pick in hand, and examined my enamel allies. The surfaces of my teeth were unmarred by plaque and gunk at this point, and not having eaten anything prior this day there was no visible buildup of foodstuffs forgotten. Still, I began working my way around my mouth, in between every nook and cranny, doing my best to avoid irritating my gum line. Though I had only been consistently brushing my teeth for a few months and could easily be called addicted to soft drinks, I had no cavities to show for it. The tradeoff that the forces of facial fate had made for me, however, was being stricken with inflamed gums. It was the only thing my dentist ever talked about. When I see him again this summer I'll have something to stick in his pipe.

A drop of blood running in between my two front incisors reminded me that my gloating would have to wait. I wiped clean the garish globule and furrowed my brow as I began to focus on my lower jaw.

I had never needed to undergo the rigmarole of braces, retainers, and the like in my youth. My teeth had proven themselves worthy of keeping themselves straight (Ironic, considering *my* state of affairs in junior high school). The one catch was a single tooth on the left side of my lower jaw. It wasn't entirely out of whack, but it was not in place by any stretch of the imagination. Crooked, would be the term, and the slight uneven gap that it added to my lower jaw's symmetry was an unavoidable griping point for me. It didn't render my jaw functional; it didn’t interfere with my smile. No, the agony would all be on my part.  Like the few uncolored pixels in an image that you know you can never properly edit. A slight, irrelevant bother, with you through thick and thin. Sickeningly admirable in its persistence, eternally galling in its existence.

Feeling the oncoming tidal wave of melodrama I deemed my flossing a job well done and cast the discarded pick into a dirty green wastebin next to my skin. I grinned, contorting my lips to get a decent view of my teeth, upper and lower, and felt satisfied with another job well done. After a swig of mouthwash, I rinsed the sink and retreated from my morning routine.

I've got upper division lit in an hour, a course to which I owe several weeks of back work due to a paperwork nightmare now thankfully passed. I was going to need more than a winning smile to get through the next hour, that’s for sure.