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If it wasn’t for waiting rooms there sure would be a lot of stuff I wouldn’t know. About the only time I pick up Parent’s magazine or peruse Field and Stream is when an appointment is running past its appointed time. If it weren’t for those moments devoted to waiting for something I’d rather not have to do, I’d never keep up on the latest in infant stroller technology or the appropriate caliber to employ if I want to hunt moose like a vice presidential candidate. Also, I’d have never learned that I no longer know how to properly wash myself.
I have to admit I never scored much better than a B minus in health class, and that only after scoring extra credit in sex ed, but the basic drill for social acceptability — use some soap and toothpaste every day … more frequently if people hold their breath when you approach — stuck with me, and, after decades of steady employment and marriage to the same woman, those principles seemed to be serving me in good stead.
But, like Paul on the road to Damascus, I’ve learned that everything I know is wrong.
Well, maybe putting a couple of articles from a back issue of Maxim magazine on a par with the visitation of the Holy Spirit overstates the case, but jumpin’ jiminy, this late in life learning that when it comes to my morning routine I’m getting only one out of the three S’s right — and the folks from Metamucil might even dispute that — is just a bit disturbing.
I thought I had my morning shower pretty much down pat — turn on the water, squeal and jump out of the way when I forget to let it warm up, grab the soap, lather up, rinse off, dry off and go about the day. How wrong I was.
Soap, I am led to understand, is as passé as lead shot and cloth diapers. Body wash is the thing to use — a concoction that, as far as I can decipher, consists of soap, water and a hefty price tag. Now I’ve encountered this stuff, and for all the world it looks to me like shampoo that’s not supposed to go on your head — why not is never fully explained. The problem with this is a practical one — aside from the top of my head, there are about three places on my body that seem appropriate and practical for the use of a shampoo-like product. While those spots are righteously appropriate for ablutionary attention, on other, less hirsute body surfaces gravity tends to send the high-priced soap/water mix heading drainward well before it performs the function Coach long ago convinced me it needs to perform.
I’m told that the solution to this dilemma is to use something they call a loofah — sort of a cross between a washcloth, sandpaper and table decorations from a 1980s wedding. Using it is supposed to exfoliate the skin — which sounds a lot like defoliate, which is what they used Agent Orange to do in Vietnam. That didn’t sound like a good idea then, over there — I’m not sure I’m eager to try it now, over here, especially down there.
And if I can’t shower, I surely can’t shave. Not only do I not spend nearly enough time or money slicing those itty-bitty hairs off my face every morning — I leave all those not so itty-bitty hairs all over my body entirely alone.
This, I now understand, is wrong … and if that magazine falls into Gayle’s hands, I fear I am doomed either to a lifetime of celibacy or full-body razor burn.
Somehow I’ve always felt that a little
bit of fuzz went well with my classic Winnie-the-Pooh physique, but the appearance poobahs appear to have decreed otherwise. The entire epidermis of the properly groomed contemporary male is bald as a baby’s butt, a fashion that makes a degree of sense for Olympic class swimmers but for the rest of us only bodes to be a bonanza for the makers of styptic pencils and Band-aids. Call it karma or call it good sense, but I deprived too many boar piglets of a future to start wielding a razor anywhere south of my Adam’s apple.
And at the end of it all, I’m supposed to do something to prevent dry skin — that is, besides neglect to use a towel. This is confusing to a guy who’s gone through life thinking that unless I’m swimming, in the shower or caught in the rain, skin is supposed to be dry. The answer is expensive skin cream, or so they say — something hard for guys of my generation to feature. The only skin cream we were brought up to use killed off athlete’s foot or some other unmentionable fungal infection — it wasn’t something to be smeared on your face before going out in public.
But then we learned to keep the shampoo above our earlobes and only used sandpaper in woodshop.
Next time, I’ll stick to National Geographic.
Contact Jerome Christenson at (507) 453-3500 or jchristenson@winonadailynews.com. For Jerome’s comments on this, that and something else check out “Up on the wrong side of the bed” at www.rivervalleyblogs.com/jerome/ or go to www.winonadailynews.com.
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