Sticking it to Tooth Decay, Cool Mint Style

[While searching for the sonnet attempt I mentioned in the previous post, I found this instead, an old free write I did for an english class. I think it is humorous, but I laugh at my own stuff pretty easily. I will have to type in that sonnet sometime, maybe this afternoon. -Ajax]

In a world of extreme sports and maximum strength pain relievers, where everything is a competition and buzz-words and action adjectives make everything more appealing, enter the Extreme toothbrush and toothpaste. Brushing your teeth is no longer a bedtime routine, it is an adventure. Commercials for oral care products feature beautiful people and adrenaline pumping (OK, maybe not) computer animation of plaque and “teeth staining” being blasted away by cool-mint laser beams of mouthwash. Tooth decay just doesn’t stand a chance anymore. Not in my mouth anyway, especially not since I saw the commercials for the new Oral-B® CrossAction® Pro-Health™ tooth brush and Crest’s Pro-Health toothpaste. “Why just brush your teeth when you can clean your whole mouth?[1]” Why, indeed.
I was convinced by the end of the commercial, 100% sold, I needed that toothbrush. My current one, store brand, was showing its wear; the bristles are flayed out in every direction and are fading fast, indicating it is time for a new brush. Two nights ago I purchased the brush, the manual version, for $3.19. In my opinion, it is living up to its hype. The package boasts of 7 oral care benefits: removes hard to reach plaque, reduces gingivitis, cleans along the gumline, polishes away surface stains, removes odor-causing germs on the tongue, stimulates gums and is gentle on enamel and gums. According to the website (footnote 1), in clinical studies the CrossAction® brush removes up to 90% more plaque and provides 55% better gum care than the competition manual toothbrush. Throw in the CrissCross® Power Tip® Bristles and soft gum stimulators and you have yourself a prepared-for-anything dental hygiene tool. I am going to destroy plaque and “odor-causing” tongue germs.
A good brush is only part of the battle; CrossAction® gets you into the battle zone, Crest Pro-Health provides the ammunition. “Using breakthrough technology, Crest Pro-Health Toothpaste is the first and only toothpaste on the market today to contain the Polyfluorite System™,” boasts the Crest website[2]. It has a Polyfluorite System™? Oh, yeah – though I don’t know what that means. It sounds like it will clean my teeth. The box features a high-tech looking diagram of teeth, covered with a grid system to pinpoint the location of the paste’s benefits: fights cavities, fights plaque, fights gingivitis, builds increasing protection against painful sensitivity (only the tooth kind of sensitivity, sadly), fights tartar, whitens teeth by removing surface stains and freshens breath. All I have to say to that is this, “wow, they thought of everything.” All it cost me was $2.79.
At the end of the day, I feel comfortable knowing that my mouth is safe. The glossy metallic-blue packaging used to protect my weapons until the time they were unleashed now lies at the bottom of a trash bucket. The commercials are over and the buzz-words forgotten, but man, my mouth is clean.

[1] Retrieved 6/18/2008, 2008, from http://www.oralb.com/us/products/manual/crossaction/
[2] Crest pro-health - about crest pro-health toothpaste. Retrieved 6/18/2008, 2008, from http://www.crest.com/prohealth/aboutToothpaste.jsp