Aquafresh Toothpaste Dispensers

I have not ranted in a while, so I thought it was time to find something
annoying to complain about. It didn't take long for my search to be over.
I found my target...or actually, my target found me. I didn't really see it
coming...

I had told mom I needed more toothpaste over a week ago. But of course, she
pretends to forget things unless we write them down on her little board on
the side of the fridge, so I didn't have my toothpaste yet. I was getting
really desperate, too...I was one step away from grabbing a toothpick and
scraping the stuff out of the bottom creases of the tube. I had even
considered using the weird neon green toothpaste the orthodonist gave me,
but I didn't want to look desperate or anything. (And plus- how do they make
it GLOW like that? Like hell I'm putting that in my mouth!) Finally, I gave
in and wrote a happy little message begging for toothpaste on the side of
the fridge. A few days later I found my new toothpaste in my bathroom. Mom
must've gotten the note. Either that or she's smelled the toxic fumes that
snuck out of my mouth every time I tried to beg for paste. Whichever.

Right away I noticed this way no regular toothpaste. It wasn't a squeeze
tube...it was a little cylinder stand up thingy. And its name was
"Aquafresh". Ooooh. I hadn't felt fresh for a loooong time. The pretty white,
red, and green stripes of paste running through the tube were appealing.
So I tried it.

It tasted like spearmint Altoids mixed with the candy canes that
hung on our Christmas tree last year. (Which, by the way were at LEAST 5
years old and stale beyond human consumption) I figured maybe I'd get used
to it...or maybe the taste would
wear off enough so people could talk to me without thinking I'd just eaten
an Altoid factory. I shrugged off the taste mainly because the tube had a
nifty dispenser top and I appreciate little gadetty things like that. So I
went to bed, feeling "aquafresh" and ready to face the world. Or something
like that.

After getting ready the next morning, I went to brush my teeth again. (What
can I say- I'd had the breath of a dead whale for far too long not to use
the resources placed in my grasp) I reached for the happy little vertical
tube, and started he press on the dispenser. Much to my horror, a nasty blob
of crusty toothpaste has began to live there, blocking any clean and pure
paste from escaping. Everyone knows nothing is more disgusting than crusty
toothpaste, so I ran into the bathroom, grabbed some TP, and removed the
alien object from my precious new device. The world was at peace again.

Everything was going great with my new toothpaste...until the crusty blob
monster struck again a few days later. Not thinking much of it, I grabbed
some more toliet paper and cleaned the thing off again. Little did I know,
this was not a task that would just go away. It would haunt me forever and
ever. Every single morning after that fateful day, I was plagued with the
crusty paste monster. And not just a little crust here and there- oh no,
this was stuff was a full fledged cauliflower shaped NIGHTMARE! Not a day
passed without having to run to the bathroom to grab some TP to make it
STOP! You wouldn't think it was that big of a deal...but it was! The
smallest most harmless seeming things in life are always the ones that make
us crack. And the aquafresh toothpaste dispenser was getting to me all right.

I tried everything. I became the neatest brusher ever- I didn't let a drop
of paste get anywhere but the brush. Yet somehow, there would always be a
sickening blob just waiting for me the next day. It was more inevitable than
pain. Hell, it WAS pain! Just seeing that tiny crust of paste sneaking out
of the top made me feel like a failure. I couldn't even beat the damn paste!
I then realized something that made me laugh. People can makee the most
complicated technological jargon that requires hours of work and could
entertain me for months completely flawless, but a simple household item
like a toothpaste dispenser can still pull a fast one on even the most
professional manufacturers. Knowing that some idiots out there can get
beaten by toothpaste made me feel a lot better.

So I stopped battling with aquafresh, and left it alone of the counter, the
genius champion of all household items. It was like a god. Since then, I've
left Mom another note on the fridge- and I've gone back to the good old
fashioned squeeze tube (Crest brand). At least there are some things in life
you can count on to work properly. My days of fighting with new fangled
dispensers were over, and I was back to the basics- keeping the pH level of
my mouth as far away from acid as possible.