It’s when a professional of some sort gives you very
basic advice about how you should do something that you should have, if you
weren’t faulty as a human being, been doing all along.
Actually, “hygiene lecture” is short for “dental hygiene
lecture,” which is the very first one of these I ever had. As
a kid, I had a lot of cavities. I’ve since been told that it was probably because
of the shape of my teeth.
But for years, I dreaded, even worse than when she did
her “Marathon Man” thing on my gums with her little picky tools, when the
dental hygienist would finish, hand me a mirror and proceed to “teach” me how I
should be brushing and flossing my teeth.
Of course, I clean my teeth, I wanted to shout. But I
didn’t. Just had to sit there and listen.
Hygiene lectures take many forms. Why haven’t you been
changing those filters or these batteries? Don’t you know you are supposed to clear
out all those cookies on your computer every so many months? And you are supposed to flush out your hot-water heaters every year? When was the last
time you changed the oil in your car? Don’t you check your bills every month
and call the cable company, the cell phone company, the electric company to see
if you can get a better deal?
The A/C company recently came to do its 6-month maintenance
on our system. Now, I could have just left everything as is and the guy would
have changed all the filters. But right before he arrived, I took out the
ladder and changed them all myself.
Because I didn’t want to hear it.
So, I guess hygiene lectures work. :o(
