I Floss Now

And I consider it a great personal triumph.

Here's why I floss now:

I have been watching my husband floss every night for all of our nearly eight years of marriage. Off and on, I have flossed for a few days or weeks, then stopped again. Mostly, I never flossed. Every night, as I would see Jeremy efficiently cleaning between his teeth, a tape would play in my brain. It went something like this:

ME: You really should floss.
ME: But I don't want to floss.
ME: But think about how much cleaner your mouth would be.
ME: I hate doing it.
ME: So what? Do it anyway. Grow up.
ME: What, you're trying to tell me that all the other adults around these days actually floss every night?
ME: No. Only the mature, responsible ones who don't want to have dentures at 45 and die of heart disease due to poor dental hygiene.
ME: C'mon, I'm not going to die of heart disease just because I didn't floss.
ME: Didn't you read that NYT article about this?
ME: Yes.
ME: And Jeremy will outlive you by at least 4 years JUST because of flossing.
ME: No. Shut up.
ME: You really should do it. What's wrong with you? Why do you just keep making excuses?
ME: There must be some way to get myself to do it, to motivate myself. A system. A program. A product. But until then...
ME: You'll be a nasty toothed loser.
ME: No one knows I don't floss. It's not like you can tell by looking.
ME: They know. And they think you look gross. It's just another thing that makes you look worse, seem lower class, less on top of things.
ME: I guess I just have to live with that. That's who I am, I guess. I'm stuck with this less-than-ideal version of myself who doesn't floss, who needs to lose a few pounds, who loses her patience with her kids, who can't seem to keep her house clean.
ME: Yep. Loser. Loser who doesn't floss. That's you.

By the time I've gone through this whole thought process, Jeremy is done flossing and we are ready to go to bed. Of course, the dialogue varies a bit from night to night, sometimes focusing more on the looming threat of all my teeth falling out and me having to get dentures, and sometimes veering off into how Jeremy must lose respect for me every time he thinks about the fact that I don't have the self-discipline to floss.

So, I decided to turn off the tape and start flossing. That's two steps:
1. Turn off the tape.
2. Start flossing.

I finally said, I don't want to hear it anymore. Then I said, I do think it's worthwhile to floss.

After reading my pathetic dialogue, you might think it's a no-brainer--anyone would want to start flossing just to avoid having to be bereated, belittled and dragged through the proverbial mud (in this case, the mud resembles tartar and plague and gingivitis bacteria).

But I consider this a great personal triumph because it's often so much easier to stay exactly where you are--in the hopeless, self-inflicted guilt, self-punishment place--than to move a tiny fraction of an inch out into the sunshine of better oral hygiene and good-habit-making accomplishment.

It's easier not to floss, but it's not a nice easier. I still hate doing it, but I'm choosing to do it anyway.