Floss and Toss
I didn’t floss growing up. My generation, and my little corner of the country, wasn’t doing that. By the time flossing hit our town my dental hygiene routine was set. There weren’t public service messages or school lessons to convince us to floss. I figured our dental hygienist was weirdly overzealous. Don’t get me started about how that attitude has caused my gums to need to be intensely attended to these days. Though the fact that the 60s didn’t really hit my town until the 70s caused us to miss the beginnings of the national flossing campaign, we still received the tossing messages. We were more than willing to throw out partially used shampoo bottles in order to buy the new improved shampoos the TV promised would make our hair look as good as the current most popular actresses. Tossing all the packaging from our personal care and food products made us feel so modern. Our grandmas were affectionately ridiculed for saving balls of string and rubber bands, and tins of buttons cut from worn out clothing. We learned to toss other things too. The messages weren’t as blatant but they were pervasive. Along with pledging allegiance to the country each day in school we also learned to toss our individuality, to conform to the group we chose to identify with, be it the Pink Floyd or Joni Mitchell camp. We did what we were told. We conformed to the expectations of our parents or rebelled in the ways counterculture insisted we rebel. Some of us clung onto our authenticity with both hands. Sometimes we were strong enough to keep at least a small hold on who we were even as we were still trying to figure that out. We were also taught not to toss spouses or friends who hurt us, even if words were their weapons. Even if their mission in life was to yank our self worth and identity out of our grasping hands. We got tired. Moving away helped sometimes but walking away felt so final. Sometimes it was. They called us oversensitive. They said everyone needs to compromise. Some of us choked on what they called compromise. The lucky ones learned to spit it out. The extremely lucky ones learned to live authentically with grace, to not judge where others were in their journeys, and most importantly of all, to not confuse servitude for compassion. Living authentically involves a lot of flossing to remove the residue from old messages we used to innocently gobble up. As I’ve been saying, personal hygiene really is important.
Cinse Bonino
2024
