It’s silly, I’ll admit, but I see floss sticks everywhere. I can’t help it. I just notice them. 

Silly though it is, the floss sticks cause me to wonder about people, life, and religion. They have even led me to Steinbeck’s “Preacher” in The Grapes of Wrath.

Look, please: Here’s a used floss stick from a parking lot at Menards. 

Here’s another at a gas station. Someone flossed while fueling.

I’ve found them at the mall. Someone flossed while on their way to a clothing purchase, or as they left the food court.

Another was on the driveway of one of the facilities I visit as a hospice chaplain. Someone said to themselves, “I must have clean teeth before I visit Mom.”

Yes, it’s true. I take pictures of floss sticks and I have them catalogued by location in my phone. I could show you more. Many more. 

It’s a mystery to me because flossing is a fastidious act. For a flosser to flick a stick and leave it as litter–that’s not fastidious.

Floss sticks are not a normal kind of litter. But then, you’re thinking, “Can anyone who photographs and catalogs pictures of floss sticks really know what ‘normal’ is?” 

Normal litter would be a cigarette butt. It seems like in the movies flicking a cigarette butt is just the normal practice of a smoker. Cool people have perfected the art of sucking the last of a cigarette and flicking it. Detectives on stakeouts leave a little pile of butts behind. 

It makes more sense, then, that the owner of a construction company who is purchasing supplies at Menards would think, “I’ll just finish this smoke before I go in to buy some sacks of concrete,” and then flick the butt. It makes less sense for someone entering Menards to think: “I gotta get back to the guys at the job site with this lumber, but first, I must pause and floss. And then, behold, I will dispose of its remains, here upon the pavement.” 

I have always hated flossing. In the old days, when floss was just string wrapped around your finger, the maintenance of teeth and gums was an icky, slimy business of drool and blood. Even with the invention of floss sticks, though, I still hate flossing. It’s just too messy. For me, flossing requires a level of commitment and determination I don’t have. 

Lots of people, it seems, based on my photographic evidence, love flossing. Do it often. Find relief and pleasure in it. And do it while driving. Whereas I think flossing is best done at home, in a bathroom. 

Even before floss sticks, my people have always been fastidious about tooth care. All the restaurants and coffee shops of my youth placed toothpick holders on their check-out counters. Some of them even offered individually cellophaned toothpicks. Still other toothpicks were flavored, so you could freshen your breakfast-breath at the same time.

Tooth-picking was for men only, as I recall. Men paid their bill, grabbed a toothpick, and started digging around in their mouths, sometimes extracting the pick to examine whatever content they had speared.  They would usually keep their toothpicks when they were done, and just carry one around in their lips for much of the morning, kind of like a…well, like a cigarette. 

Two thoughts have crystalized for me, too, as I have pondered floss sticks and their users

First, the littered floss sticks have helped me see that people just can’t help being human. Maybe Casey the Preacher in The Grapes of Wrath was right: “There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do.” 

My life’s religion has always been the grim, ashen-faced task of trying to convince people to control themselves and be fastidious for God. Steinbeck’s Preacher is saying this approach lacks any value in actually restraining sensual indulgence. Humanness keeps busting loose from our bodies and souls. You can lace a person up, bind them up tightly, and pin them down with the commandments as you interpret them, and you can preach Moses or Paul with sweat on your brow.

Eventually people will either live out their truest impulses or be miserable in the refusal or inability to do so. Everyone is trying to dig around within themselves, seeking relief, looking for some authentic peace in their skin. For people like me, this can be rough business, because it must reckon with the sheer power of bodily fluids and hormones and flesh and blood. And grace.

Second: In this era of religious Trumpism, Jesus was right. You can be fanatically fastidious about your religion, and then, with your well-maintained mouth, swallow a camel.