HOW TO: Be deliciously minty-fresh

Used to be that when you wanted to have fresh breath in the middle of the day, you'd have to put a tube of toothpaste in your pocketbook along with a toothbrush in one of those plastic cases and sometimes the lid would come off the toothpaste and it would squeeze itself all over your wallet and your keys and your cassette tape of "Listen Like Thieves."

Then, through magic or just pure genius, someone came up with the idea for the Colgate Whisper and MY LIFE CHANGED FOREVER. I really hate the way gum and mints feel in my mouth, so not for me the minty mid-afternoon freshness of the mint-popper or the gum-gnasher. Not unless I wanted to keep buying new wallets, anyway.

Et voilà! If you'll look at my little bitty toothbrush up above, you'll see that there's a dot in the middle. Before using the toothbrush, that dot is filled with a button of non-foamy gel toothpaste gel that you brush over your teeth without water. Seriously, I brushed my teeth while waiting in line at the bank's drive-thru, and although I did snare a few weird looks from the people in the cars next to me, I have to say that my mouth felt lovely and tingly fresh. You'd think those people would have been appreciative of my committment to oral hygiene, but no. Ah, well, Rome wasn't built in a day! Soon I'm sure that EVERYONE will be using up otherwise wasted time in drive-thru lines by healthily brushing their teeth.

So what a nice invention! I am sold! And if there were some way you could make the little tiny toothbrush disappear into thin air after using it, that would be even better. I hope someone is working on that, because I didn't happen to have any tissues in my purse or paper napkins in my glove box and I had to slip it into my coat pocket, which made me feel a little gaggy and almost made my whole clean mouth experience counter productive when I threw up in the car.

PURCHASE HINT: You can buy these tiny toothbrushes at place like CVS or Walgreen's or Wal-Mart for way too much money, like $3.48. But if you'll go to the Dollar Tree, you can buy the exact same deal for, yep, one slim picture of George.