Grafton has taken a fluoride tablet ever since he had his first teeth. (South Hadley water is not fluorinated.) Since the tablets came in a child-resistant prescription bottle, it was always Dad's job to open it for Grafton and offer him the tablet. When he was young, I would carefully pour out one tablet into the upside-down bottle cap, which now doubled as the serving tray, and offer it up to him. Often, however, more than one tablet would sneak out and I'd warn Grafton each and every time this happened, "Just take one." As Grafton got older, and clearly capable of remembering on his own to take a single pill, I would still provide the reminder with a grin. Some nights, when we were in a joking mood, I'd spill out the whole contents of the bottle into the cap and provide the same daily reminder. Or, to keep the jokes fresh, I'd spill out a few and tell him "Just take two!" (To which Grafton would just shake his head, confirming his lack of enthusiasm for my attempted humor.) Habits die hard, and this silly interaction continue on even to this day (with occasional minor variations--none of which have any hope of invigorating the joke with any level of humor).
In the mail today arrived two envelopes addressed to Grafton. Both were from a class action settlement, having to do the with the flouride tablets we've been giving Grafton. The pharmaceutical company lost the suit, having been accused and found guilty of having only provided 44% of the labeled flouride content in the tablets. For which our award of damages was a meager $15.35 of the overall $15.5 million suit. But no matter. The real disappointment is that all along I really should have been telling Grafton, "Just take two!"
