One is my doctor recommended mouth wash.
The other is hand soap.
I keep grabbing the hand soap after brushing my teeth. Then, realizing I've done it yet again, I bend back down and grab the mouth wash instead.
Don't feel bad for me. It counts as two or three reps of core training.
When you look at both bottles side by side, they actually don't look that much alike. The hand soap bottle is sorta blockish with strong sloping shoulders while the mouth wash bottle is that classically thin model with the large cup sized cap. Looking at the two side by side, one might think I'm an idiot for confusing them more than once.
But we're talking, like, everyday.
And the reason is the 'Cool Blue' color.
In my defense.
The hand soap is the exact same 'Cool Blue' that I remember from my grandmother's guest bathroom. In the early days, 1984 thru 1987, She always had two different kinds of mouth wash. There was the Mint Green Scope, and of course, the cure-all pee yellow Listerine.
My brother and I opted for the Scope because gargling with Listerine was like rinsing your mouth out with sin.
When she ran out of Scope we made sure that evening to spike her dinner milk with barbituates so that she would be far too sleepy to remember that we needed to brush out teeth.
Then, one day, the Cool Blue replaced the Mint Green, and our worlds were changed forever.
It was so soft and so sweet, it was like the angel food cake of mouth washes.
For years, it was the stuff.
But as I got older, I kind of sensed that maybe it was too soft. Maybe the Buddists are right and the only way to enlightenment is through pain, which means clearly, Listerine is the best mouth wash to use, and for a time I switched to the equivalent of oral flaggelation.
That was right about the time Listerine came out with it's own 'Cool Blue' color.
But Listerine's 'Cool Blue' was much darker, much heavier, much more likely to inspire fear.
It was a lot like the color of my current doctor recommended mouth wash.
I think I still prefered the yellow pee stuff. Cool Blue Listerine just felt like a cop-out.
And then one day, I read something about something, and in it was chapter on false advertising, and in the chapter on false advertising was the landmark case against Listerine, for not doing any of the things it claimed to be doing.
Apparently it was as effective as rinsing your mouth with salt water. (or hand soap for that matter)
And once again, my world changed forever.
I'd just been givin the keys to an adult perspective on virtually everything I've ever touched or consumed. The was a wild moment of actualization.
I don't believe in conspiracies (mostly cause I don't think people are that smart) but I do believe that the temptation to take things at face value, an evolutionary defense mechanism in all of god's creatures, is like cat-nip for the unscrupulous.
Thirty years after Linsterine caughed up $10 million for false advertising, get this, Listerine was sued again for claiming that it's mouthwash was as effective as flossing. The company actually fudged the test results and got caught.
Catnip.
That was 2005.
In that same year I got into an argument with a psychologist over his prescription of Prozac for my step-son. Prozac is an anti-depressant, but in young children it has been found to reduce symptoms of obsessive compulsion.
"Really Doc? Really? Cause the only thing I ever found about Prozac being able to reduce OCD is a single, nine child study, when seven of the nine were relieved of symptoms. That's it, just one. And further more, Prozac is a life long commitment. There are no studies whatsoever, NONE, that suggest methods of how to reduce dependence and eventually eliminate dependence."
I was absolutely convinced that the drug solution should only be considered if there was a considerably well mapped out escape route. Drugs were fine as long as they were used like a compress to stop the bleeding, but in no way should they be considered as good as stitches for repairing the wound.
Such an escape route, alas, does not exist.
Nor will it probably ever.
The single biggest failure of a capitalist society is that there is no money to be made getting people off of drugs.
Please don't forget that I am a Cool Blue Blooded Capitolist myself.
But there is a reason why Ideology and Idiocy share a homophonic ancestor.
And I lost the fight to Big Pharma anyway.
Cause, well, unlike Listerine, Prozac worked as advertised.
Just like the dark cool blue doctor recommended mouth wash I use now.
I say 'Doctor Recommended' not because that's what's on the label, but because an actual doctor actually recommended it to me.
I have extremely porous teeth and this dark cool blue stuff is supposed to help with strengthening the enamel. More enamel = Less Cavities, which means less $ spent at the doc's office.
The doc has no financial interest in my lack of cavities.
And since a date with his drill costs some serious coin, and since I was going to be buying mouthwash anyway, I decided to give it a go because, you know, "What if?"
I continue to buy it now, despite it's hand soap camoflauge, because I haven't gotten any cavities since. I don't know if it really works works, but it's a zero investiment with a positive and cost saving outcome.
See?
Capitalist.
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