What a child sees, remains

This is my weekly column for the Sunday Nov. 9, 2008 Hibbing Daily Tribune.

What a child sees, remains
By Aaron J. Brown

When I was a kid, maybe 4 or 5, I remember staying overnight at my grandparents’ house in Keewatin. I don’t remember why I was there, but for some reason my teenage aunt was babysitting me. It was she who faced the task of shepherding me through the bedtime routine. The toothpaste, different from my toothpaste at home, was a problem. I said something equivalent to, “I don’t like this toothpaste.” My aunt said, “You should like this toothpaste. This is the toothpaste the PRESIDENT uses.”

That president was Ronald Reagan, the toothpaste was Aquafresh and I have no idea if this was true or just something people say to get kids to do things. I’m a parent now so I know how that goes. You’ll say anything to get a kid to do something when they’re being a punk. Anything. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, so long as you stop hitting your brother with that rawhide dog bone.

Childhood memories are notoriously fuzzy, but the Ronald Reagan toothpaste memory rose to the surface this week when Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. I remember after my aunt told me that President Reagan used Aquafresh. I asked a question that no doubt frustrated her as she desperately tried to get me to bed so she could do teenager things: “What did the president do back in “those rooms.” I was talking about the rooms that were behind the podium where, I’d later learn, the president does press briefings. She didn’t know exactly what happened back there so I just assumed, using kid logic, that the president brushed his teeth in some special room with fancy carpet in what I would later learn was the West Wing … the place where the red phone and the nuclear codes are. And the possibility that the PRESIDENT used the same toothpaste that was in my grandparents’ bathroom in Keewatin was enough to get me to use that toothpaste, even though it was different and, thus (to a kid) bad.

And so I went to bed that night, teeth clean, letting childhood sleep hide this memory until Nov. 4, 2008 when Barack Obama was elected president. It occurred to me that President-elect Obama would be the first president that my three boys, ages 3, 1 and 1, respectively, will know. They don’t know the current president. They are busy with other things. But I remember President Reagan to be the only man important enough to get me to use strange toothpaste, even though I knew then nothing of his policies, politics or even his actual choice of toothpaste.

The events of the last week have been greatly amplified in the media. As the days tick by, I imagine even President-elect Obama’s supporters are tiring of the endless analysis. The first African-American president. The first Hawaiian-born president. The first president to live overseas for an extended time as a child. The first this. The first that. Hope. I could see how all this could be overwrought. But one fact still lingers days after the election. When my boys are just a little older the only president they’ll know is the son of a Kansas woman and Kenyan father. What came before can be changed tomorrow, no matter how distant the light of dawn. All things are possible so long as you brush your teeth and remember what you learn.

This is the 21st century.

Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Contact him or read more at his blog, MinnesotaBrown.com. His new book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range” is out now.