Monday Memories – Calvin’s Toothpicks

Along about my 4th grade year, cinnamon toothpicks were a big fad. The sixth grade boys especially liked them. If your mom wasn’t going to the store soon, you could make your own by sticking plain wooden toothpicks into little vials of cinnamon oil and letting them soak over night. Lots of us did that and then promptly burned our eyes by accidently rubbing them after touching the fresh toothpicks.

My childhood best friend, Nita, said the doctors had to operate and take a ball of wood the size of a golf-ball out of her dad’s stomach because he used to chew on toothpicks all the time. Nita said she never saw the ball, but that it was true. I didn’t doubt it. Nita said that’s why her dad said we shouldn’t chew on toothpicks but should just suck the cinnamon from them instead.

When we got married I told Calvin about Nita's dad, because he liked chewing on wooden toothpicks too. One day Calvin discovered plastic toothpicks and he began chewing on them instead.  You may notice that a lot of the pictures of toothpicks that I post on the blog have Calvin on the other end. 

    

    

Calvin always tucks his toothpicks in his pocket for later, but they come out somewhere in the wash instead.

For several years I subscribed to a food magazine and each issue had a drawing of a wooden toothpick hidden somewhere in the magazine. They called it searching for Ted’s Toothpick. Abe always looked for it and often found it, but we never claimed the prize. A week ago while I was at work something kept poking me. I knew what it was without looking; it was one of Calvin’s toothpicks. I went into the bathroom stall, lifted up my dress, turned it inside out and started feeling the seams, searching for Calvin’s toothpick. I thought, “This is just like searching for Ted’s Toothpick, except there is no prize and I don’t have Abe’s help.” Toothpick #87 was in the blue and black floral dress, right side seam, waist high.

A day or two later Calvin was sitting on the bed while I was pulling out toothpick #93 from a pair of socks. He watched me carefully unweave it from the fabric and said, “Someday you’re going to miss finding my toothpicks everywhere.”

I said, “I promise you I won’t. I will miss a lot of things someday, but I will not miss finding toothpicks in the washcloths, in the socks, especially in my whites, in my dresses, in my coats, or in my shirts. That is one thing I can promise you I will not miss.”

He laughed and said, “Oh yes you will!”

Last week Calvin left to go hunting. Guess what I found in the carpet right after he left? Yes. Toothpick #106. I picked it up and set it on my dresser with every intention to throw it away. Five days later there it still sits next to the love note he left on my pillow.

He told me so.