All relationships need boundaries. In our house, there’s one that’s redrawn daily.

“Stop using my toothbrush!”

It sounds reasonable enough. Sharing toothbrushes is gross, especially in cold and flu season.  So why must we have this conversation again and again?

The answer is that we’re always rushed when we brush our teeth. In the morning, we’re trying to get to work/school. At night, we’re trying to get to bed. Also, we have about three billion toothbrushes that look exactly alike. Yes, we color-code. But then the dentist hands us free toothbrushes that don’t comply. A pink toothbrush person gets a pristine blue number at a check-up, and the whole system’s wrecked.  Believe you me: no child of mine is going to give up her new toothbrush just because it’s Dad’s color.

Then there are all the individual toothbrush bylaws. They include the-impossible-to-remember:

-“I don’t like character toothbrushes anymore.”

-“The Giant toothbrushes are ok but not the Kroger ones.”

-“Child-size toothbrushes are for babies.”

-“My downstairs toothbrush is green with red patterns, and my upstairs one is red with green patterns.”

I’ve thought of labeling everyone’s toothbrush with my fancy label maker. But within a day the stickers would get gunky and peel off. (Fast forward to me fetching Futura font out of the drain with chopsticks.) Sharpie markers seem like a good idea for identifying brushes. But hello, false advertising, Crest dissolves “permanent” ink.

Last night my husband picked up his toothbrush and bristled to find it was wet. “Who used my toothbrush?!” He demanded. But did it matter? The damage was done. “THIS is my toothbrush, not this one,” he said, holding up two blue sticks. In the sallow glow of the Cars II nightlight, I struggled to see the difference. I flicked on the vanity light and tried to commit the brushes’ identifying marks to memory. One had a two-tone blue pattern and a name brand. The other was a slate-blue model from CVS. What bit of information would I dump from my brain to make room for this new data? Maybe the picture of Ryan Lochte biting an Olympic medal with his grill on.

I received the come-get-your-child call from school at 8:45 last Friday, just fifteen minutes after morning drop-off. The lice outbreak I’d been reading about in school emails had caught up with us.  This meant my workday was over. It also meant a monkey wrench in my ambitious weekend plans.

From school, my good-sport-kid and I drove to the drugstore. There we bought lice shampoosticides. Then it was home for washing, combing, picking, and checking. Hours later when we finished, it was time to retrieve my other child from school. By the dinner hour we’d all been treated. The house smelled like a Cargill plant.

But there was more work ahead. Fourteen Hefty-bags’ worth. Inside the weighty black sacks sat all the fabric in our house. The entire contents of clothes dressers. Tablecloths. Curtains. Comforters. Rugs. Stuffed animals. Sofa slipcovers. Everything had to be washed to prevent a re-infestation. So at 10 p.m. I drove to “Bubbles,” a 24-hour laundromat.

Under the fluorescent lights, near a bank of clothes dryers, I spied just what I’d expected: a drunk dude in a dew rag. That’s why I’d decided to bring my nunchaku from karate class. The man was half-dozing, half-trying to bum a ride home. I placed the nunchaku in my back pocket to send a message. Something like: “See these nunchaku? I could hurt you, even though they’re made of foam so I won’t hurt myself.”

Next, I made my move towards seven large-capacity washing machines. Each of the shiny, industrial models spins three times more clothes than a domestic washer. This meant liberation from a weekend of continuous laundry duty. I loaded the drums, turned the temperature to hot, and pumped $4.50 into every slot. Then I took a look around the place. “We should get lice more often,” I definitely did not think to myself. But I’ll admit that Bubbles wasn’t the worst place to spend a sexy Friday night. There were video games, Chicklet dispensers, and a change maker that rained down quarters like a Vegas slot machine.

It was 2 a.m. when I folded the last of the clean clothes.  I didn’t get to practice my nunchaku or read the novel I’d brought. The machines finished in a tidy sequence that kept me busy shuttling clothes from washer to dryer to folding table. I’d packed a second set of Hefty bags to hold the clean laundry, and loaded each one to the gunwales.

There were no other Bubbles customers left as I carried the heavy black sacks to my car. It was just the moon, the Dew Rag, and me. He saw I was preparing to leave, and started in on his schtick about a lift home. I kept track of his movement in the storefront reflection. There were still ten bags left to carry when I saw him stand up from his seat. Using my phone’s voice memo application, I faked a call to deter him from getting any closer.  I conversed with my husband, who was sound asleep at home. “Yeah, I’m ready for the tournament tomorrow,” I said, quickening my pace. “Universal 6 starts with a knife-hand block, then a high block, then a reverse punch and a jumping roundhouse kick.” Dew remained standing, but he stayed put. He yelled out an apology for interrupting, which I pretended not to hear. “Ma’am, would you mind calling the rescue squad for me?” As I walked out the automatic double doors, I noticed he was surveying the chips in the vending machine. He was fine, and so was my laundry. They both just needed a bath and some time to sleep it off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvKa7H6VEkk

On any given day, my family could unload some clutter. My children are prolific makers of things. They’re also tenacious holders-on. Sentimental types. They come by it honestly, via dominant maternal genes. Fortunately, about two months ago we stumbled upon a DNA-reverser more powerful than Feng Shui books or personal organizers: Fly Car.

While on our way to a friend’s potluck dinner, we happened to park behind a red compact car. As we gathered our bags and serving bowls, we did a double take at what clearly was not an average auto.  The first thing we noticed was that the rear windshield was not a windshield at all, but a giant piece of Saran Wrap secured with duct tape. Now, in our Southern college town, it’s not unusual to see ad-hoc window repairs. But it is unusual for a homemade windshield to boogie, like one of those foil stovetop popcorn pans. Bulges of movement flashed against the crinkled plastic surface–one here, then one there, then poof, poof, poof, here, here, here, there, there, there.

Flies. The pulses were flies colliding into the rear ‘windshield’ from inside the car. A fecund hatch had hatched in the hatchback. And they were dying to get out.

There I was, holding a homemade Caesar salad, about to chow down on a bunch of delicious food at our friend’s lovely home. Yet I was riveted to a stomach-turning scene unfolding a block away, inside the car of a stranger. My husband, kids, and I peered in the windows. While they watched the swarm ballet, I looked for the grey, writhing ribeye I was convinced had spawned all the flies. I shifted the salad bowl to my hip and squinted. Was it under those books? Or the Big Gulp cups? Maybe in that heap of unopened mail. Or in that moldy laundry bag wedged between the seats. Wherever the presumed meat lurked, one thing was clear: this was the hoarding handiwork of no mere coed. It was the opus of a seasoned pro whose clutter had the power to generate life. I didn’t know whether to vomit or applaud.

Long after the potluck was over, the memory of Fly Car stayed with me. I lay awake that night wondering. Who made Fly Car? What was he trying to say? When did he realize his ribeye was missing? Then I thought: what if it wasn’t a ribeye at all? I grabbed my phone, dimmed the screen and Googled “cheap steaks.” The next morning when I dropped the kids off at school, a friend said “You look tired.”

There was once a time when I’d lie to my kids about stuff I’d given away. In response to a query about a ratty stuffed animal or a cracked frisbee, I’d say,  “Oh, it’s around here somewhere!”  An exhausted parent can only wipe away so many tears in a day. Later, when my kids grew a bit older, I’d say, “We let the toy move on to a new family.”  Now my response is simply “Fly Car.” It’s like a PSA slogan about hoarding. Short. Gross. And effective.