Always Read the Label

When you are at your most vulnerable, you need all the help you can get. Do you get it? No. I live in a house full of women and I am well looked after in the most part but these girls turn the bathroom into a minefield.

There you are, in the shower, naked, enveloped in steam, water streaming into your eyes. You need shampoo. Your groping hand soon knocks several plastic bottles down into the shower pan.

Which one is shampoo?

Is this one shampoo? How will you know? Read the label of course. I was taught always to read the label in chemistry, pharmacy and medicine. It is important and knowing the contents of the bottle can be life-saving.

These bottles are different. The labels are of the makers’ name and not the content of the bottle. One can read the large type, even without spectacles and with watery eyelashes. Is it shampoo? Something about tropical fruits, aloe vera, raspberries, peaches, herbs, bananas, tea tree, apricots, pineapple, thyme, oats (Oats, not porridge surely?). Every bottle declares some sort of fruit or herb as if in a fruit bar rather than a shower.

Get Your Specs

What to do? Turn off the water, drip your way to the bedside and pick up your specs. Gee, its cold when you are wet. The not quite so large writing declares things are ‘Pro’. Pro-life, pro-health, pro-clean, pro-vital. Then it is ‘nourishing’, ‘invigorating’, ‘used by the stars’, ‘organic’, ‘healing’ or ‘from our Hollywood Laboratories’.

It can be ‘Good value’, or ‘Best value’ or ‘Specially formulated’. You dry your eyes, switch on the light. Getting down to the smaller print now.

‘Foundation’, ‘Cleansing Cream’, ‘Conditioner’. Please – I only want a simple straightforward shampoo. ‘Bath lotion’, ‘Body Cleansing’, ‘Moisturising’. Moisturiser? In a shower. What about water? Is that not enough?

Ah, at last. One that says ‘Shampoo’ in tiny letters. But it is not for you. This one is for brunettes with damaged ends, or for dry hair, for oily hair. There is nothing for ordinary grey hair – nobody has ordinary hair.

It will have to do. Place your glasses safely, somewhere where you will not accidentally knock them down the toilet. Restart the shower and get the temperature right – lovely. Now, that shampoo. No dummy, you don’t just unscrew the top, you have to lift the lid with a fingernail. No, double dummy, don’t lift this side, it’s the other side. Or maybe you press on one side.

At last, give a squirt. There is a bubble and a burp, it’s an empty bottle. It doesn’t matter anymore. You have torn out all your hair in frustration.

Whatever happened to Soap?

Now, what was that we learned in chemistry at school? The sodium salt of a fatty acid is called SOAP. There was a piece in here somewhere, once upon a time, it will have to do. If I can find it.