Truth in Advertising

A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster

January 13, 2019

I bought a stick of AXE deodorant. You must have seen the ads on TV and in magazines. This stuff is irresistible to women. Once a man dabs this on he is instantly a babe magnet and has to beat the ladies away with a club.

It was quite a decision for me. I mean besides whether I wanted to buy something that costs 8 bucks when my usual brand is in the 2–for section at the dollar store. I also was faced with a moral dilemma. Should a man blessed with so many attributes attractive to the members of the fairer sex use a product that enhances his desirability even more? I could list all my endearing qualities and physical characteristics that put me in the top 10 percentile of males — or stud muffins as we are commonly known – but I neither have the time to write them all down, nor do I possess the meanness one must possess to make the average man feel hopelessly inadequate — even though he is.

Modesty does not permit me to brag about my nose — surely one of the wonders of the animal kingdom. My mother is a Wallace, a descendant of Wild William Wallace, Scotland’s greatest hero, who whomped the English at will so many centuries ago. (As a matter of fact I think she was embarrassed about our Wild William ancestry and at the Orillia Scottish Festival always wore a Lone Ranger mask.)

Yes, I have inherited the famous Wallace nose, a honker of such grand proportions its picture in the Guinness Book of Records covers pages 34 through 39. I have an uncle who eked out a living during the depression as a carport until a cold put him out of business. (He sneezed and blew the windows out of a Stutz Bearcat.)

So surely you can see my dilemma. Does a man with such unique qualifications add to his desirability by using AXE? It was while I was considering the ethics of my situation I remembered some of my attributes had waned to some extent. The last time I actually swept a woman off her feet was the time I decked a young lady with a push broom while sweeping the floors at Dominion Store when I was but a youth.

Thus I felt justified in purchasing a small stick of AXE on a trial basis.

As you might expect, I was asked to sign a legal document at Shoppers relieving them of any responsibility should the combination of my beauty and the AXE lead to any lawsuits if a number of women left their husbands over me. Once this was done, I was warned not to come back to that particular store while wearing the AXE as they did not want screaming women chasing me through the aisles.

Rather than just swab it on, I thought I would try a test dab to see the reaction I would get from the one person who is completely immune to my charms, but Mary was out. So off I went to the Orillia Square Mall to see if I could get lucky. (That was a poor choice of words. I should have said ‘to see if some woman could get lucky.’)

Oddly enough no one seemed all that interested, even when I took my shirt off and fanned my armpits in the general direction of the Food Court. I reread the directions on the side of the container and other than the usual warnings about rashes and not to feed it to the cat, there were no instructions whatsoever. I slipped into the washroom and slathered on another layer, not too deep, I was still able to lower my arms. Out I went once more, being careful to plot a getaway path should the ladies come at me in droves. Still nothing!

It was then that I noticed the dog. He was a friendly little fellow and for reasons that baffle me, he seemed to want to round dance with my leg. A moment later, a schnauzer wandered by, sighed and joined him. By this time, I was starting to panic since someone had left the door open and I could see hundreds of little doggies running across the parking lot, all barking and loaded for bear so to speak.

Needless to say, I bolted out the back door for safety. Unfortunately my car was on the other side of the mall and my chances of getting there were about the same as Doug Ford being re-elected and I took off. At the moment, I am somewhere north of Huntsville running like a s.o.b.

By the way, what do wolves look like?

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