Being outsmarted by my toothbrush | Lisa Scottoline

I love technology, except when it loses its damn mind.

Examples abound. Let's start with my toothbrush.

I had an electric toothbrush for six years, but it broke, so I needed another one. I went shopping online and noticed that the newer versions have bells and whistles, but whatever.  I clicked on the latest incarnation of my old toothbrush, because I have neither the time nor the desire to ponder the details of a toothbrush.

I have a job. And, allegedly, a life.

Plus, I save my desire for Bradley Cooper.

My toothbrush arrived, and I knew I was in trouble when the box said GENIUS.

I've accepted the fact that my smartphone is smarter than I am, but my toothbrush?

Dude, I'm smarter than a toothbrush. I should be able to kick a toothbrush's, um, brush. Toothbrushes have nothing on me. Can a toothbrush write a book?

I don't think so.

You would think human superiority over toothbrush was a settled question.

Evidently not.

My genius toothbrush comes with four different heads.

Already it has three more than I do.

And four more than the Congress of the United States.

Not only that, my genius toothbrush has many different functions, which dazzles me.

Call me crazy, but I didn't expect it to have any functions. Perhaps I haven't demanded enough of my inanimate objects.

I didn't expect my toothbrush to function at all unless I brought it to life by my magical arm.

Then all I wanted was for it to go back-and-forth or up-and-down for 10 seconds or until I got sleepy, whichever comes first.

This pertains whether it's morning or night, unfortunately.

Five of the functions of my genius toothbrush are shown on the side, signified by tiny drawings of a tooth, a feather, a diamond, a wave, and a fairly graphic picture of a tongue hanging out.

You haven't lived until you've seen a tongue on a toothbrush.

It's like bad porn.

I suppose the tiny drawings are supposed to explain things, but to me they're only more confusing.

Let's start with the first picture, of the tooth.

This would be your basic go-to setting, since it involves teeth.  To my mind, that will be the only setting you need for a toothbrush.

If your toothbrush has a picture of a foot, return it.

Maybe not such a genius after all, eh?

Then we come to the tiny drawing of the feather, which is cute and makes me think of dreamcatchers, even though they don't work.

Trust me, I've had about a million dreamcatchers in my lifetime and they didn't catch anything but dust.

I try not to see this as symbolic.

Or perhaps my dreams really did turn to dust.

In any event, I don't get the whole idea of a dreamcatcher, because I guess it's supposed to catch a dream that's floating in the air, but if the dream was in the air, then it was somebody else's dream anyway.

Your dreams should be inside your head, not flying around getting caught on dusty things. And who wants to catch somebody else's dream?

That would define both of my marriages.

My dream was divorce.

But I digress.

With respect to the feather function, I logically assumed that it meant the setting was lighter, except that when I put the toothbrush on that setting, it felt like my teeth were being jackhammered.

So maybe it is my dentist's dream, caught by my toothbrush.

Either way, incomprehensible.

The tiny drawing of the diamond function would suggest it polishes your teeth like a diamond, but that didn't happen, either.

There's only one thing that shines like a diamond, and women know what it is.

A diamond.

The last drawing is of the wave, and I have no idea what this meant, nor did the toothbrush do anything remotely wavy, and I can't swim anyway.

But the wackiest feature of the toothbrush is that it has Bluetooth.

I'm not making this up, either, I swear.

My toothbrush has Bluetooth.

I'm going to skip the bad puns because, really, I have standards.

(Proof is, I could've written about my dry feet again, but I didn't. And you know I wanted to. But I stopped myself, which is what counts.  That's the professional part, which I obviously have in abundance.)

Instead I'll go straight to asking, why would my toothbrush need to connect to anything else, via Bluetooth?

Is my genius toothbrush going to start communicating with my smarty-pants phone? And will these two know-it-alls leave me out of the equation entirely?

And if they're so damn smart, why couldn't they figure out how to buy themselves?

The next step is that my toothbrush connects via Bluetooth to my laptop and takes over my entire world, answering my e-mails, arranging my calendar, and then what?

Writing my books!

Maybe my toothbrush really is a genius.

But maybe I'm smarter still.

Because I keep the check.

Look for Lisa and Francesca's new humor collection, "I Need a Lifeguard Everywhere But the Pool," and Lisa's new Rosato & DiNunzio novel, "Exposed," in stores now. Also look for Lisa's new domestic thriller, "After Anna" coming April 10. lisa@scottoline.com.