Toothpaste

When I made my regular weekly trip to the grocery store last Saturday, I decided to pick up a replacement tube of toothpaste.  I went to the toothpaste aisle to find my preferred brand, and it was pretty overwhelming over there.  There were so many variations of the product, I had trouble finding my favorite – cool mint gel with tartar control and fluoride.  I definitely didn’t want the white mint paste, which I think is too chalky.  I didn’t want peroxide or baking soda or anything fancy like that.  I just wanted a tube of what I always get and have probably gotten for the past ten years.  Should be simple, right?  Wrong.  In addition to offering an overwhelming number of choices, they changed the packaging on me, too.  All of a sudden I had to think about what my options were – I had to stop and read labels.  Gosh, this would take time!  How dare they change things on me! How dare they waste my precious time!

Okay, (sigh) so I read the labels.  One box proclaimed that it would give me “12 hours of fresh breath”.  Another package offered a teeth whitening option.  Well, I could live with that – who doesn’t want fresh breath?  Who doesn’t want white teeth?  I thought, “I can handle this – I’m a label loving American, right?”  So I read the active ingredients on both boxes.  Wait a minute!  Both ingredient lists said exactly the same thing.  The marketing guys were messing with us consumers, and I was getting frustrated because all I wanted was my regular darn toothpaste.

Then, all of a sudden, in mid-whine, I stopped myself.  (Brake screeching sound.)  What the heck was the matter with me?  All these choices before me, and I was whining about the inconvenience of having so many.  Then it hit me.  The toothpaste aisle actually epitomizes a major component of the American lifestyle – the freedom to choose.  We want our choices, and the marketing people are just giving us what we want… at least, in this case, they are giving us the appearance of a choice on the package even if the ingredients are the same!

Then in an instant my annoyance changed into gratitude… okay, I admit it.  There was a little guilt thrown in there too.  Really, though, how dare I complain having too many choices?  People are being wiped out by genocide on the other side of the planet, and I was aggravated about toothpaste.  Gaining more perspective and gratitude, I remembered what my friend told me when she came back from a business trip in Manila last year.  She described the poor people she saw along the way to her nice hotel.  She told me about their appalling living conditions – about their cardboard box “houses” and naked babies without diapers and about how when the rain washed away their boxes, they had to go find another to live in.  Do those people even have toothpaste?

I am grateful for the choices I have, for my toothpaste and, yes, even for the aggravation I had last Saturday.  It’s far better to have so many choices than none at all.