For Best Results (reprinted from Skirt.com)

“Why wouldn’t you want best results?” My husband asks.

 

I have no idea what he’s talking about. 

 

He brings the toothpaste tube over to me.   It is bulging at the top and bottom, and skinny in the middle.  It looks like a free weight.

 

“They tell you to squeeze from the bottom, “ he says, ”to get best results.”

 

I will never get the most out of my toothpaste.  We have tubes all over the house, misshapen vessels with dried-up toothpaste that will forever be imprisoned in the tube.  No matter my intentions, I squeeze from the middle.

 

This irritates my detail-oriented husband.  We have been together for almost thirteen years —during seven of which we have used separate toothpastes.  Now we don’t fight about it. 

 

I’m my way.  He’s his.  I leave every cabinet open, every cap off and every door ajar.  We used to fight about it. “I’m sorry,” I would say as I took out the garbage and left the top up.

 

He has his things too.  He is a snooze abuser.  He sets the alarm forty-nine minutes prior to his wake-up time.  He presses snooze seven times before he gets out of bed. 

 

This would never occur to me.  The alarm buzzes. I get up.  I have been doing this since I had my Panasonic alarm clock, back when all four Beatles were alive. 

 

“This is very selfish,” I used to say.  “It is rare I get to sleep later than you and you are ruining it for me. "

 

“That’s the way I do things,“ he says.

 

The man doesn’t wash a dish.  He minored in women’s studies in college, and leaves his dirty dishes in the sink.

 

“I kind of like it when you wash my dish,” he says.

 

If Gloria Steinem weren’t alive, she’d be turning in her grave.

 

When I argue, he’ll bring up the toothpaste and the cabinets.

Then I’ll bring up the snooze button.

 

I’ve come to see that it’s not worth it.

 

And that’s how I get best results.