What would you do when you’re visiting a neighbor and her 6- or 7-year-old son walks up to her with a piece of straw pulled from the straw broom and his mouth open? That’s exactly what happened the other night when I was over at my host mom’s house. It turns out that her son had gotten something stuck in his teeth and was trying, unsuccessfully, to get it out with the straw from the broom. After my host mom, her daughter, and I all tried unsuccessfully with the straw as well, I took him to my house and was quite successful with a bit of dental floss. As I was using the floss, I was wondering what in the world he was thinking and what he’d say to his mom.
But I didn’t have to wonder long, since I walked him back home and got to be part of that conversation. “Look what Susie used to get it out. And it tastes so yummy!” I explained that in the US, we use dental floss to dislodge stuff stuck in our teeth. So my host mom then summarized it well: “Since you don’t have straw brooms in the US from which you could pull out a piece of straw to clean your teeth, you have to buy dental floss instead.” Yeah, something like that. I didn’t mention things like sanitation or how a broom used to re-manure the kitchen floor or sweep the goat dung out of the yard wouldn’t be our choice of something to put in our mouths, but just agreed.