Soap, Part II

Our boys have started to take showers on their own. Up until now, we had been giving them baths. The decision to move to the shower was spurred mostly by the fact that all three of them don’t fit in the bathtub together anymore, and giving three individual baths really cuts into my TV time.

I still have to give Boy Number Three baths, but it was about time the older two started pulling their own weight in the personal hygiene department. Plus, we really wanted to see if the shower in their bathroom actually worked. We have lived in our current house for almost three years now, and up until this week, no one had ever used it. When I finally got the handle to turn, after the loud clanging noise subsided, water actually came out of the showerhead, so we were good to go.

After the Body Wash Incident of Early 2011 (See “Soap,” posted February 2, 2011) my wife has been sure to keep me stocked with plenty of good old-fashioned bar soap. Since my wife has inexplicably stuck with the body wash, and the kid’s baths get done with baby shampoo, up until now, our bar soap had been used only by me. So, this week was Boy Number One and Two’s first experience trying to wash themselves with a big bar of soap. Witnessing that slippery learning curve instantly flooded me with childhood memories of soap. I had a strange upbringing, soap-wise.

My dad was a pilot for Delta Airlines. In the early days of his career, with a wife at home raising three small kids, he would always bring the little bars of unopened hotel soap and the small bottles of shampoo home from his trips to help with the household budget. His flight schedule usually had him gone multiple days at a time, so he collected a lot of soap. So much so, that we never ran out. As the years went by, the Hilton/Marriott/Ramada soap harvesting never stopped. I showered with a tiny, fits-in-the-palm-of-your-hand bar of soap from my very first shower until I was 18 years old. (Actually, I showered with a different one every other day. They don’t last very long.) As a result, I never had any early childhood regular-sized soap training.

I vividly remember the first time I used a real bar of soap. I was at least 6 or 7 years old, and we were staying with my grandparents while my parents went on a week’s vacation. I stepped into the unfamiliar shower and was immediately transfixed by the GIGANTIC bar of BRIGHT GREEN soap. (The hotel soap was white, tan, or the occasional exciting off-pink.) This was Irish Spring, and it smelled AMAZING. (The hotel soap smelled like almonds, talc, or nothing.) This giant, magical, colorful, brick-sized bar of cleanliness filled the entire shower with some heavenly, yet previously unknown fragrance. Apparently – based on the TV commercials of the 1970s -- it was supposed to remind me of the wonderful smell of a lush green Irish glade near a waterfall where I was walking hand-in-hand with a bonny lass in a turtleneck sweater, but since I had never done that, I didn’t recognize the smell. To me it just smelled strong and wonderfully different.

Then I tried to pick it up and use it. Now, big bars of soap are hard to handle for any six-year-old, but to a lad that had previously only worked with soap the size of a bite-size candy bar, this slimy behemoth was almost totally unmanageable. I must have dropped it, picked it up, and dropped it again a hundred times. The racket coming from the shower got so loud, my grandma came in to check on me, but I was so embarrassed about not being able to work the soap, I told her that everything was just fine, and that I obviously didn’t need any help. She left unconvinced.

After a half-hour of soap hockey, I finally ended up attempting to soap myself up while holding onto the massive slippery green bar with two hands at once. That is a pretty difficult maneuver, and I'm not sure how clean I actually got myself that day. Marginal hygienic success aside, it was one of the most memorable days of my childhood, so taken was I by the giant, fragrant green soap.

If asked to come up with the defining TV characters of their childhood, most guys my age would probably list the likes of Superman, The Fonz, Mean Joe Green, Bo and Luke Duke, etc.

I’m guessing very few would list an actor from a soap commercial. To my list, however, I must include the guy in the snappy turtleneck and sport coat, standing in the field, cutting the bar of Irish Spring open with his pocket knife. When I saw that commercial as a kid, I thought to myself, “Yeah, I was that guy for a day. Fresh and (insert wolf-whistle here), clean as a whistle!”

But alas, that one shower was the extent of my Irish Spring glory as a child. My parents came back from vacation, and it was small soap business as usual again.

There was, however, one major up-side to growing up with miniature soap. As kids, we never had our mouths “washed out with soap,” a la Ralphie in A Christmas Story, sitting with the bar of Lifebuoy in his mouth. My mom was probably afraid we’d accidentally swallow the hotel soap.

My boys won’t be so lucky. I’ve got plenty of full-size bars of Irish Spring. I love that stuff!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen

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Soap

My wife has been couponing. This is a new sport for shoppers involving laying out thousands of dollars on ranch dressing and ketchup, because the price was so low, “it was practically free,” and then giving them away to friends and family because you ended up with five hundred bottles of each. She swears to me that we are saving money by stocking up on things we don’t need, but I remain skeptical.

One item in particular became a point of contention recently. She came home with six big squeeze bottles of “Men’s Hair and Body Wash.” I asked her why in the world she had bought me liquid body wash, to which she answered the typical coupon addict’s response of, “It was so cheap, they were practically giving it away.”

My main problem with that recurring answer is that there is a certain amount of money between “actually” and “practically” when it comes to giving things away at the store.

She then told me that she planned to stop buying bar soap for the shower. I was to immediately begin washing myself with liquid “Energy Wash” that would “Recharge and Energize without Drying.” (With mint extracts!). I politely explained that that was not going to happen, and she should return the bushel of body wash to the store. She calmly informed me about the coupon return policy restrictions, and politely inquired as to why I was such a stubborn jackass. I told her that my bar soap worked just fine, and then went on to state my case about how I don’t think we’re actually saving money when she buys things we don’t need, just because they are on sale. She didn’t see it my way.

After a few days and approximately three hundred requests from my wife for me to “try the damn body wash,” I gave in.

One of my main objections to using body wash was that I didn’t want to have to use her weird looking, pink, loofa-like, spongy, spidery, half-sandpaper/half-shammy-cloth thing-a-ma-jig that hangs on a rope from our shower handle. It looks like someone tied a pink fishnet into a knot the size of a grapefruit, and the only thing it does is collect shockingly cold water and dead skin cells. Besides being disgusting, it is a tool that I just don’t want to have to use.

I like bar soap. Bar soap is ingenious. You pick it up and use it, and when it disappears you know it’s time for a new one. It is self-cleaning, and there are no appurtenances, tools, holders, delivery containers, devices, or spongy loofa things. It’s just you and the soap. Simple.

She listened calmly to my hesitations about using her squishy pink bacteria farm-on-a-rope, then she rolled her eyes and explained - in the same voice she uses when she is helping one of our children figure out a ridiculously simple problem - that I obviously did not need to use her bath sponge. I could just squirt the body wash into my hand, and proceed to soap myself up. Since the body wash was apparently un-returnable, I gave in and told her I would give it a try. She thanked me profusely in the same voice she uses to thank police officers for speeding tickets.

The next morning, it was go time. I hopped into the shower, strangely enthusiastic about my new cleansing adventure. Maybe I would love the body wash. Maybe I would discover a whole new world of instant morning refreshment. It was, after all, “energy” wash that promised to “recharge and energize” me through the deft and patented use of non-drying mint extracts.

Here’s how my body wash experience went:
1) Grabbed bottle of energizing body wash from shower caddy.
2) Unscrewed the large blue bottle top on the squeeze bottle and stared down into the ¾” diameter opening.
3) Thought to myself, “How does this work? This stuff is going to come out of here fast.”
4) Smelled the energy wash. Mmmm. Minty.
5) Further pondered the large opening.
6) Examined the large blue bottle top in my other hand and finally noticed the flip-top cap on top.
7) Screwed large blue bottle top back onto bottle and flipped flip-top open.
8) Looked at much, much smaller squeeze-bottle delivery hole and decided that was the way to go.
9) Squeezed large handful of bright-blue minty energy wash into my right hand.
10) Flipped flip-top closed and set bottle of energy wash back in shower caddy.
11) Washed top of left forearm.
12) Ran out of minty energy wash.
13) Did some quick math in my head.
14) Decided that if I needed to keep opening the bottle and getting more minty energy wash every three seconds, I would be 2-1/2 hours late to work.
15) Left minty energy body wash in shower caddy.
16) Picked up bar of soap.
17) Washed myself.
18) Put soap back in soap tray.
19) Turned off water.
20) Toweled off.
21) Threw bottle of super-minty energy-style hair and body wash into trash can.

I informed my wife that the experiment had failed, and as a side note, that it did nothing to energize me at all, mint extracts or not.

She informed me that I was a Neanderthal and just simply did not know how to use body wash properly.

I’m a pretty smart guy. What am I missing, here? How is body wash supposed to be even remotely as convenient or useful as bar soap? I asked my wife that question, which she refused to answer. She just mumbled something about how cheap it was. I guess in the couponer’s mind, price goes a long way toward necessity and usefulness.

As far as the “recharge and energize” claim, I still haven’t figured that one out. Maybe it’s caffeinated and I was really supposed to drink it.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!