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well. That is why urine was the Crest White- strips of its day; the ammonia found in its chemistry had some whitening properties. When that didn’t work, teeth could be filed and treated with nitric acid. As for bad breath, its causes are typically born in the mouth, and usually from poor dental hygiene. Bad breath typically means a type of bacteria has found a place it loves—your mouth—and it’s making babies there. The name of this creature is Solobac- terium moorei and, believe it or not, scientists only learned of the culprit in 2008, which is absurdly recent. Other causes of bad breath include the foods you eat; the gum disease gingivitis (which 1980s television taught me is, along with quicksand, among the most pressing problems a person faces in life); stress; booze; some sort of tonsil, esopha- geal or stomach problem; or maybe kidney failure. I would get that checked out just in case. If you’ve just landed on Earth and need some pointers, here’s how to keep your teeth clean. STEP 1. Buy a toothbrush. Rouses has so many to choose from that it can be overwhelming, I admit. I suggest you go with the red one. STEP 2. Buy toothpaste. Get the kind with the most stripes, or maybe the one with sparkles. Eenie-meenie-miney-moe it. You really can’t go wrong here. Now I know what you’re thinking, having just read that: Rouses is in league with Big Dental and it’s all buy buy buy when it comes to mouthcare. Reader, I assure you we are not. But we do care about your health and your enjoyment of food. Your bad breath is affecting your senses of taste and smell, and your teeth are going to rot out of your head, and how do you expect to eat from the Rouses smokehouse department, where you get bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers and bacon-wrapped stuffed chicken thighs? You can’t gum bacon, fella.

this stuff, offering angles for brushing and all these crazy instructions. I don’t think we have to worry about all that today. You’re reading a grocery store magazine to learn how to brush your teeth. There’s really no wrong way to do it at this point, as long as you scrub the entirety of every tooth. Just really shove that toothbrush into your yuckmouth and give it the business. STEP 9. Spit. Don’t swallow toothpaste. Spit that nastiness into the sink, and wash it down the drain, you animal. When I was a kid, I slept at a friend’s house and he and his kid brother swallowed their toothpaste as they brushed, and 30 years later I’m still thinking about it. Don’t do that. STEP 10. Brush your tongue. Oh, you’re not done with that toothbrush just yet. You’re going to town on that tongue. Keep going. Just all of it, until it looks like—well until it doesn’t look like whatever it looks like right now. Make it look like everyone else’s tongues. And get far back there, too. STEP 11. Rinse. (Even I didn’t realize there were so many steps to this.) Rinse that fresh, minty mouth out with a whole bunch of water. Just swish it around and let the hydro- dynamic features of your newly flossed and buffed teeth really turn your mouth into a waterpark. Spit out the water and rinse that sink again, because nobody wants to see that gunk when it dries. STEP 12. Mouthwash. The final step. Pour about a capful of Listerine into your mouth, and swish it around for 30 seconds, and gargle too, like on TV. (I don’t have enough time to explain how to gargle.) Spit it in the sink, don’t forget to rinse it—I won’t tell you again. Congratulations! You will now have a much easier time making friends. Go ahead and toss your facemasks in the laundry, too. They probably need a good cleaning of their own.

STEP 4. Go ahead and pick up some mouthwash, too. The yellow Listerine will kill any microbe within a mile of your mouth. Get the big one.

STEP 5. Go home. Please don’t brush your teeth in the health products aisle.

STEP 6. Floss. You’re probably thinking, No way, man—that’s advanced level oral hygiene. But stay with me here. When I was in high school, my best friend’s dad was a dentist, and I asked him once if he flossed every day, and he said he did, and I found that hard to believe. But he gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “David,” he said, “go home and floss your teeth and smell the floss after. If you’re OK with how it smells, don’t worry about it.” Well of course I did that the moment I got home. In short, I have not missed a single day of flossing since 1996. The American Dental Association has this whole long thing about how to floss, and no one’s got time to read that. Here’s the short, short version: Hold that string tight and run it up and down between each of your teeth, and if you run out of teeth, floss behind the back ones, too. I’m no dentist but that’s pretty much the whole thing.

STEP 7. Apply toothpaste to tooth- brush. Just go wild.

STEP 3. Get floss. Close your eyes and point at the rack. Now open your eyes. The one you’re pointing at? That’s the right one.

STEP 8. Brush. Again, the American Dental Association is really pedantic about

18 ROUSES MARCH AP R I L 2021