Stop And Smell The…
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
Does a whiff of your hair make you think of Thanksgiving? Do you find that just sitting near you in a closed room gives family and friends the irresistible urge to sing Christmas carols, drink rum and eggnog, and put toys and trinkets into everyone’s stocking?
That happens to you! Good news, it may not be old age and dementia after all. It may well be your shampoo.
I discovered this phenomenon quite by accident while I was in the shower. As I was reaching for the high notes of Nessum Dorma (if you sing in the shower always go for the operatic stuff. Your neighbours already think you are an idiot at least now they will think you are a classical one)… where was I? Oh yes, just as I was about to do my Pavarotti I dropped the shampoo. It hit the drain, bounced through the shower curtain and slithered across the bathroom floor coming to rest beside the toilet.
Try not to picture me crawling bare of bottom to its rescue. You will have horrifying nightmares and need therapy on a regular basis for years to come.
When I picked it up, I read the label and was not surprised that it was Dove 2 in 1 shampoo, one of my regulars, but what did shock me was it now contains sage. That, of course, explains the sudden craving for turkey with all the trimmings. But why did Dove choose sage? What about rosemary and thyme? A combination of all three of them would be great in a shower on Christmas morning, although adding cranberry sauce would be just plain stupid.
I checked another bottle (I don’t normally buy shampoo by the truckload but it was a two-for special and you know how it is, save a buck here and a buck there and before you know it your bathroom is wall to wall shampoo and you are on social assistance) and this one has menthol in it. Menthol! I thought that was just for cigarettes and cough candies.
What is with this adding all kinds of crap to shampoo anyway? Did a Unilever chemist discover some medical benefit to adding sage like a cure for baldness and terminal dandruff, or was his wife just cleaning out the pantry and came across her mother’s spice rack which had been gathering dust since she made an apple pie in 1956 no one would eat? And his missus, who never cooked a thing in her life, said, ‘What the hell, maybe Elmer can take it to work and get rid of the damned stuff there.‘ Mystery solved!
Ever since I read the side of a box of a jar of Cheez-Whiz I have had a great fear of what companies are adding to prepared food. Doctoring what we eat is bad enough and will eventually kill us, but why are they adding strange substances to non-food products. Under the bathroom sink I found a bottle of foot lotion from Manitoulin Island containing haw berries. I have never heard of haw berries. I have heard of Manitoulin Island, in fact I have been there, but I don’t remember seeing haw berries. The only thing I thought was odd about the island was every person living there had beautiful feet, all size 22EE unfortunately, but beautiful nevertheless.
I have a plunger bottle of body cream in the bathroom from Germany. It is quite good and does a fine job. The only drawback is every time I rub it on I get the sudden urge to fly to Munich and burst into ein prosit der gemuetlichkeit and the neighbours are complaining, not about the music but they all come down in their lederhosen and knee socks and I charge way too much for beer.
My body is a temple, actually it is rapidly approaching the size of a cathedral, and I try to treat it as such. I am very careful what I put in it, rub or spray on it or insert in it. Yes, insert. One day I found a box of Preparation H suppositories in the medicine cabinet and the instructions wanted me to… no, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I tried them once or twice but it didn’t work. I mentioned it to the ladies at the pharmacy and they asked me to go home and read the instructions.
I guess I missed the part about taking them out of the tin foil wrapping.
(Image Supplied)
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