I was struggling for inspiration for tonight’s post until I came across this post by my ‘fabalicious’ blog buddy, Confessions of a Rotten Correspondent.
Go on read it. It’s funny.
Anyway, it reminded me of a story my friend Barbara told me, and I think it’s a story that deserves to be shared.
(Names have been changed to protect the innocent…erm, and the guilty.)
Right.
‘Barbara’ and ‘Norman’ live in a large top floor flat in the roof space of a dilapidated yet charming old house.
They share this flat with ‘Nev’, an old colleague of Norman’s, who has hung around a lot longer than the friendship.
Nev pays half the rent.
So it’s his flat too,
But he doesn’t clean it, paint it or love it in any way.
So why are Babs and Norm living with him? I hear you say.
Well, Norm, in his bachelor days, needed a place to stay, and Nev needed a room-mate.
Norm, as he was a trucker and also a bassist, spent little time at their pad as he was either on the road or gigging, and Nev, as he was in some kind of flush of youth, i.e. not the first, but not mature enough to be called, well, mature, spent most of his time behind the fish counter at Morrisons, or in his local pub, the interestingly named, ‘New Inn’.
NB. Nev didn’t just hang around sniffing the sea bass, he actually worked there, so it was allowed.
Oooo, N.B. again, a ‘flat’ is an ‘apartment’, just in you weren’t sure.
So,
Norm and Nev lived together out of convenience, which then became habit, which then became indifference. But nobody was in a position to ask anyone else to move out as nobody had been there first.
So, as the years passed, and Norm began to spend more evenings at home with various girlfriends (not all at the same time), he began to notice a distinct lack of something in Nev’s life.
Infact a distinct lack of two things,
No, three…
1. Personal hygiene
2. Friends
3. A relationship with a female person of the opposite sex…you know…a girlfriend.
Obviously the absence of the first precluded the probability of other two, but this did not spur young (ish) Nev into extreme bath action.
Instead he lay about the flat, smoking, drinking and creating numerous unpleasant emissions from every orifice you can imagine, and indeed probably some you cannot.
In short, he was smelly.
Fetid, malodorous, whiffy and rancid.
Bereft of bath soak, lacking loofah, without wash mitt.
At this point in my tale you might feel I’m being unkind…
…that some foul deed must have befallen poor unfortunate Nev, but as far as Norm and Babs could judge he was merely an odorous soap dodger who cared not for his fellow human beings and would have been quite happy living in a dung heap.
Anyway, on with the story.
Now,
Of all Nev’s nasty, nauseating, nostril assaulting, personal hygiene habits, his lack of oral hygiene was the worst.
His breath could melt tarmac. He could poison elk from a distance of 50 miles away, and no one ever saw him anywhere near small children…or at least no small children that lived to tell the tale.
Even his plaque had a problem with plaque.
In short, his exhalation caused expiration.
As for the visual pollution caused by these mournful molars, well I can only say that they were the colour of sunset over a lush summer meadow…
While Babs and Norm were not aways comfortable with their less than fragrant friend, apart from the above annoyances, he was a fairly easy flat mate.
In that, he kept himself to himself.
He only ate the food that lay festering on his shelf.
He did not leave his underpants on the floor in the bathroom,
and he only picked his nose and wiped it on the chair arm when he thought they weren’t looking.
They sat on the settee.
But all this was about to change…
It ’s a normal day.
Norm and Babs go to work, then come home.
They eat.
They watch a film about an acrobatic postman.
They go to bed.
Nev arrives home late and can be heard in the bathroom next door.
He uses the toilet.
He flushes the chain.
He brushes his teeth.
OH MY GOD.
HE BRUSHES HIS TEETH.
Hooray, I hear you shout.
Nev has at last realised the error of his ways.
He is leaving his hideous hole and joining his fellow humans in the embrace of cleanliness.
Norm and Babs look at each other in shock, then with expressions of joy…
…then,
horror.
He is brushing his teeth.
But,
He doesn’t own a toothbrush…
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September 4th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
ARGH!
Yuck yuck yuck
You know.. oh yuck yuck.
I want to wipe my tongue off with a disinfecting wipe
I want to gargle with rum.
I want to have never read those last couple of sentences.
September 4th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Ahh Cami I know, but it cracks me up every time I think about it.
I mean, what if he’d done it before and… arghhhhhhh.
They kept their new toothbrushes in their bedroom from then on.
September 4th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
That is so well told! It read like some of the ghost stories from last week–the supsense, I mean. Very yucky, though. I always keep a few extra toothbrushes on hand for when we feel like we want a new one, or when one of my kids has a friend sleep over and they forget theirs. Something some readers (RC!) out there might want to consider.
September 4th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Oh my lord! I feel the sudden need to go off and take a bath and disinfect the entire house, I am seeing germs everywhere.
September 4th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
ooooooooooooooo I wasn’t expecting that ending…..and now as I trudge off to brush my teeth….I wonder…whose been using my brush?????
September 5th, 2007 at 12:47 am
Thanks Mrs Weasley.
Spare toothbrushes is a good idea.
We keep extra heads for our electric ones and I always have extras ready for Misses E and M, in case one ends up in the bin or the toilet.
Ingenious, when I think of it, I always want to wash my mouth out.
Corey, I know. At least hopefully you don’t have any lodgers with yucky teeth.
September 5th, 2007 at 3:12 am
I’m still laughing out loud and wondering about my gruesome humour. My day is already going well and this has made it even better. However, big condolences to Babs and Norm, or is that congratulations. Hopefully there was a chemist close by to source an emergency supply of toothbrushes. Well told Jo and thank you
September 5th, 2007 at 3:45 am
Erm, as if I wasn’t queasy enough. Oh, Jo, the story was told so well. Like a cross between The Young Ones and Edgar Allen Poe. Brilliant. If…heave inducing.
September 5th, 2007 at 6:38 am
Hee hee, it makes me laugh too 21st CM, but if it had happened to me and Mr B I dare say I would find it less amusing…
Jen, I’m so sorry to add to your queasiness. It makes me feel sick and I’m not pregnant.
September 5th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Boy oh boy, can you tell a story! Hilarious and horrifying all at once. It’s enough to make you want to gargle with kerosene…just in case.
September 5th, 2007 at 11:17 am
There are few things worse than poor personal hygiene when one has the option.
ICK!!!!!
I would have had to move out after that. AND pour lighter fluid in my mouth.
September 5th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Quite revolting. What’s he doing these days? Hermit? Holy orders? Disneyland?
Mya x
September 5th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
RC, Susan, it is truly gross isn’t it…
Kerosene in the mouth seems a little extreme for your RC, but possibly a good thing for him Susan.
Mya, I have no idea where he is now. We don’t shop at MOrrisons though, I mean, they let him serve food???
September 6th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
That was great! I feel the need to go shower, brush and floss just reading it.
But NB? Not British? Being that I’m not, maybe that’s why I didn’t get it? Or it could be that it’s very late here (I guess it’s very early there!) and I’m slow.
Either way, great post!
September 7th, 2007 at 7:55 am
Hi Blue Momma.
You are not slow.
We just know different stuff.
N.B is short for nota bene, which is latin and means note well.
It’s used in the UK loads to kind of highlight certain things.
Like NB. Do not lawnmower over small children.
x