Mavis toothpaste is for tourists, and bicarbonato di sodio is for the brave.

A long time ago, I read about a woman in Northeast Ohio who had something like ten Golden Retrievers. She was doing a booming business renting them out - not for photo shoots, or to people who wanted dog therapy, but to home owners who wanted it to seem that their new wood floors were older and better-used than they actually were. This woman would move into a house for a few days, or a week, and have the dogs run around on the floors, their paws scuffing the boards; at the end, she would vacuum up the hair and mop the wood, and the floors would have the scratches and markings that made them feel lived-in, loved, used.

I think of those dogs whenever I see Marvis toothpaste. I first saw it in a TJ MAXX or a Marshall’s in Cleveland, and the label looked like it had been created by a graphic designer who had been told: make the brand look older and more established than it really is. Perhaps they wanted it to appeal to people who rented dogs for a week to run around their homes, or bought faux-distressed particle-board furniture and pre-torn jeans.

But I shouldl judge not.

Objectively: the website for Marvis only dates it to 1997, and there are no dependable histories available online. One must assume that, despite their attempts at an origin story, it is younger than Taylor Swift, and that their shady foundational myth is an acknowledgment of their missing provenance in the face of other brands.

But.

If you want an Italian toothpaste with history, accidentally stumble upon Pasta del Capitano, which is actually the oldest toothpaste brand in Italy. When my tube ran out in Pisa, I had to get an emergency tube of some other brand at a pharmacy; it didn’t have baking soda in it, and after a few days my teeth started to get that fuzzy feeling, like baby stalagmites and stalagtites were building up on them. I was running my tongue along the ridges one morning wondering what to do. I didn’t want to waste the tube I had bought, though, and after a few seconds I thought: what if I just got baking soda, then dipped my toothbrush in it?

So I went to the Conad grocery store near Ponte Vecchio. It was fairly well-organized; it seems that thought is put into every step of the Italian food journey. I went in, past the fresh produce, through the cheese, past the butcher, and landed in the dairy aisle. I went up and down each aisle until I found the baking section with flower, sugar, food dyes, etc. Five minutes of scanning didn’t turn up anything. I went through the rest of the store, then, and doubled back on myself; they didn’t have baking soda or powder anywhere.

I loaded up Google Translate, and found a woman stocking juice.

“Mex-cue-zay,” I said. “Bicarbonato di sodia?”

She stood up and, haltingly, pointed and said, “You checkouts ask.” I thanked her and walked with my basket to the line, confused. What about baking soda required that they be behind the checkouts? What were kids using it for? Is it because it’s a white powder? Are they cutting it into speed, or packing it into bullet casings?

And, when I got to the front of the line, I got rushed, and nervous. The woman rang me up, but spent the whole time complaining to her workmate about something - one of those conversations where two people were sharing an emotional moment, and it was clear that, besides paying, any further interaction with me was extremely unwelcome.

And the next few visits were no better. I forgot, I was rushed, the line was long and I didn’t want to take up more of their time - any number of things got in the way of me actually asking for the precious, regulated baking soda to stop the layers of minerals making my teeth grow. Once, I thought: surely I don’t need to ask at the checkouts - maybe the woman who I spoke to at first misunderstood me, and was telling me that the people at the checkouts spoke better English than she did? So I asked a man, and he, too, said that I should ask at the checkouts.

Then, finally, I decided to not wait anymore. My teeth were too fuzzy.

I got to the checkouts, prepared to ask not only where it was but why it was a controlled substance. When I got to the counter, I asked, and the woman…

Pointed to the top of a shelf behind me.

It turned out that it was on a high shelf near the checkouts, next to little yellow grenades of concentrated lemon juice; nothing about it was controlled. I grabbed a kilogram box, which cost something like €.80, and she rang me up. I didn’t have to show a prescription or my passport. My self-consciousness about buying baking soda was completely absurd.

I used it for the rest of the trip, until, finally, I found a sale on Pasta del Capitano at a pharmacy in Palermo. I bought something like eight tubes to take back with me as souvenirs so that, for a while at least, I wouldn’t have to ask anyone about baking soda.

(I never saw Marvis anywhere but the tourist pharmacies in Florence, where I assume they sell boatloads of it. It seems that it is not actually very popular in Italy but is, instead, an “Italian” brand popular in other countries - a bit like Altoids (which are sold as a British mint in America, but are only made in Chattanooga, Tennessee), or Foster’s “Australian” Beer (which seems to now be made everywhere but Australia), or Aussie Hair Care products (care to guess?). What does that say about the the seemingly human desire for foreign provenance? Maybe it’s that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and the cosmetics, mints, and beer are always better on the other side of the border.)