Talking Mirrors and the Ideological Dangers of Floss

As I was standing in a heroic pose in front of the bathroom mirror, preparing to wage war against the enemies of toothdom, my mirror started talking. "What are you doing?" it asks.

"What are you doing?" I ask. "You are a mirror."

"Ah yes," it says. "But I am a talking mirror. Have you not read Steele's Tatler essays? The Spectator letters? Sarah Fielding's David Simple? The question is not whether a mirror can talk, but whether it does so with words, or only with images. As a mirror, I reveal to you your true character. Think of me as the portrait to your Dorian Gray."

"An Abbot to my Costello," I reflect. "Hmm ... I don't really feel like having an epiphany about my real character right now. What can you give me if I hold up ... this floss dispenser!" Held aloft, the floss dispenser glistens, both like a gauntlet of challenge, and a shield of defense.

"It is cinnamon-flavored floss," the mirror comments.

"Why, so it is," I admit, gazing at the floss as if I have never before observed it critically.

"Vanity," the mirror remarks. I stare at the mirror and say nothing. "Not me, I mean. The floss." I stare quizzically at the floss and say nothing. "You know, the cinnamon." I make grotesque stupid faces into the mirror to show my puzzlement. "Look," the mirror says, exasperated. "Why do you use floss?"

"To save my teeth."

"Yes," the mirror says. "To save your teeth from food stuck between them. So why do you need flavored floss? I'll tell you why: because not! Wait, that's not what I mean to say ... it's hard enough being a talking mirror without having to talk clearly ... okay, the point is that floss does not need to have taste. Floss's purpose is to atone for your eating things that do have taste: this--this cinnamon monstrosity is like your trying to have your floss, and eat it too. Look inside those boxlike compartment things in the bathroom! Do you see it? Cinnamon-flavored floss! Berry-burst flavored floss! You lead a life of quiet desperation, chasing after novelty-floss items and failing to see the beauty that lies beyond this bathroom."

"That is not true," I defend myself. "Just the other day, I saw the beauty of the kitchen."

"Do not get me started on the kitchen!" the mirror shrieks. "Do not get me started on your novelty gel-detergent. 'We need orange blossom scented detergent,' you say in stupidly effeminate voice. 'I don't like the lemon-scented gel-detergent, but we can try some spring breeze fragrance detergent for variety, because I am a pansy,' you say in whiny teenage girlesque voice. Do you not see the degradation? Do you not realize that dishes were made to be clean, not to smell of flowers? That if your detergent gel must smell, it must emit appropriate odors, such as beef gravy or garlic? Monuments to decadence, all! Vapidity! Vanity! Insanity! A celebration of the unnecessary!"

"I need to floss my teeth," I announce. "And I don't need to hear this right now."

The mirror pauses. "If you do not need to hear this right now ... then I am a celebration of the unnecessary! I am self-referentially incoherent!" The mirror shatters into a thousand pieces, and then I awaken in bed. I yawn, and I discover the taste of cinnamon on my tongue: was it dream, or reality?