Another baby boomer lament
I wandered into a newly-remodeled grocery store in a nearby town recently to pick up some toothpaste. The local toothpaste emporium was out of my brand.
Have you shopped for toothpaste lately?
(Quick, you Baby Boomers, what brand of toothpaste did Bucky Beaver use?)
The big store had more brands, flavors, colors, and sizes than I could imagine. What ever happened to just plain toothpaste that tastes like
No plain old ordinary Ipana toothpaste there. (Whoa, could that be the answer to the above quiz question?)
Everything is made for a specific tooth, gum, mouth, or breath problem. The solution to angst about your mouth is in a convenient tube. Toothpaste has been developed to prevent cavities, to fight gum disease, to freshen breath, to whiten teeth, to banish tarter, and to kill germs. And the most recent addition is called something like "whole health." Guess what it does? It helps you fight the germs that can lead to heart disease and a whopping bunch of other stuff. Gosh, if only I had known before my cardiologist said, "By-pass surgery for you." I could have promised to brush a little harder, a little longer, a little more often with "whole health" toothpaste. What an alternative!
But wait! What do you do if you have more than one of the above-mentioned problems? What happens if you want to prevent cavities, discourage tartar, and oh
(Quick, you Baby Boomers, who do you think is the target audience for all of this convenient health in a tube? Hint: it's not Bucky Beaver or your kids.)
Toothpaste also now comes in gels like hair gunk, with flavors that remind you of gum, scented candles, or beverages at the bar in a posh resort. Tart refreshing lemon, perky island coconut, orange splash, Granny's apple twist, fresh watermelon, cool blue froth, wintergreen, spring green, green fields of summer, or Christmas pine green. And the mints: spearmint, peppermint, cool mint, mint mint, Denver mint, double mint, and two mints in one.
And did I mention the size of the toothpaste tube? This is a colossal item. There is enough product in a tube of toothpaste to caulk a two-story house, fill all the potholes in the streets of Peabody, or resurface the parking lot at the Coneburg Inn. If you purchase a tube of "cool mint tarter-fighting, whitening, hootchy-kootchy, ya-ya-ya" gel toothpaste, it is so huge it will still be in your medicine cabinet after you have been dead for seven years.
We must be a troubled society indeed, if we need this many choices just to brush our teeth.
I get so tired of trying to find plain old toothpaste, the white paste kind (not a gel), comfortingly chalky, cute little rodent with big teeth on the package. I want plain toothpaste in a simple tube that I can clutch in one hand and squeeze sufficiently enough to dispense a bit onto my toothbrush. Is that too much to ask?
(Quick, you Baby Boomers, what was it that "went" when you brushed your teeth with Pepsodent?)
Hopefully the local toothpaste emporium will be restocked soon and I can find my old favorite. I will throw out this tube of new and improved Pucker Up Gel in wild and tangy mocha that promises to kill even the germs that cause foot odor.
That is my lament for the week. Yes, I am a baby boomer. I want what I want when I want it.
— SUSAN MARSHALL
