13 Things I Could Do While Waiting for the End of My Electric Toothbrush Cycle

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This blog post could probably just be one tweet that does middling numbers, but since I have to endure the unique mind-numbing torture that is brushing my teeth for what feels like an hour twice a day, every day, I figured — why not extend this into a full-blown listicle that maybe 3 people will read? File this one under: first world problems.

If you think microwave minutes are long, or treadmill minutes are interminable, I would like to introduce you to Quip (or whatever your electric toothbrush brand of choice is) minutes. Allegedly, this thing has a 2-minute timer, but I think anyone who’s felt these infernal pulses knows that the makers of this toothbrush actually set the time limit to “the second they think it’s over, then we hit ‘em with another round.”

I mean, seriously. Here’s a list of all the stuff I could do in the time it takes my electric toothbrush to finish vibrating:

1. Sing “Happy Birthday” four times while washing my hands

2. Come up with five bad jokes about my nightly hygiene routine

3. Mentally write my grocery list. For the next month.

4. Do my whole skincare routine… if only I could apply retinol with one hand

5. Clean my bathroom (please note, this is a commentary on the length of these damn pulses and not my shoddy cleaning)

6. Watch an entire episode of The Pitt — because I’m convinced this toothbrush breaks the space-time continuum

7. Finish my novel, probably?

8. Call my mom

9. Plan my entire wedding from start to finish

10. Recite my wedding vows

11. Conceive a human, go through the entire gestation process, and give birth to said human

12. Journey into the depths of hell and rescue my beloved by luring her out with the sound of my flute-playing

13. Come up with the cure for cancer