A Soap By Any Other Name...

We moved into our new home at the end of June, and more ecstatic I could not be. We loved our last home. It was the first home we ever owned. (And by “owned” I mean “owed an obscene amount of money to Washington Mutual.”) Two of our children were literally born inside that house, (one on the couch, one on the toilet.), we loved our neighbors, and we loved the low interest rate. But the time had come when we had really outgrown the place. Plus I didn’t want to have to take my daughter into the bathroom one day, point at the toilet, and say, “I’m afraid the rumors are true, Roxanna…this is where we brought you into the world.”

As fate would have it, I also started a new job this year. A job that has enabled us to own this new house, no less. (And by “own” I mean “owe an obscene amount of money to IndyMac Bank.”) The job is good, the house is wonderful, my family is healthy and happy … but if I’m going to be completely honest, I must admit that my entire sense of accomplishment stems from something else. Soap.

On our first morning in our new home I stepped into the shower to discover a new bar of soap, the likes of which I had never before seen. “This isn’t our standard Spring-scented Ivory,” I thought to myself. No, this soap was white…and kind of oval shaped. Hmmm… I picked it up, wetted it in the shower stream, and began rubbing it between my hands to produce a lather – the way God intended. Sweet saints and soldiers – this soap was fantastic! It smelled of success. It smelled of destiny. It smelled of providence. There is no way that a man having showered with this soap could not have concerted power over his own fate and the fate of the people around him. No sir. This was clandestine soap. This was the soap of corporate executives. Of media moguls. Of members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, for crying out loud! This soap had a new convert, to be sure. I became addicted.

My confidence at work – unmatched My social calendar – filled. My drollness around strangers – above reproach. I was certain that life could never get any better for me, now that I had discovered this life-shifting soap! Psychiatrists should prescribe this stuff, I thought. How much better the world could be if we could all ascertain the power of this soap. Bless you, Katie, my darling bride…bless you for experimenting with new soap.

And then one day the soap had gotten quite small.

“Honey,” I shouted from inside the shower, feeling powerful and masculine. “Can you hand me another bar of soap, this one is almost gone.”

“Really? Are you using the Ivory?”

”No. That is substandard soap.”

"What have you been using?”

“The other soap. The white, oval-shaped soap.”

“Oh. Huh. That soap was here when we moved in.”

I froze mid-lather, my hands to my face. The stream of water from the showerhead beating against my chest with a deafening reverberation. I was partially horrified that I was using a bar of soap owned and used regularly by a man I had never met, and partially horrified that the soap was almost gone, and I had no idea what it was called or where I could find more of it. I quietly wept, hiding my tears in the shower stream.

The soap is gone now. I guess it’s only a matter of time before I can kiss my job and this house goodbye as well. (Who’s going to employ a guy that smells like Irish Spring? Well, I don’t want to work for that employer, mister. I can’t go back to being that guy.)

Like a bump on a blog...

I’ve owned and written in a journal since 1979, when one was given to me as a “gift.” I was eight years old. I wrote it in faithfully, logging away such memories as trips to Disneyland, water skiing with my family, and a faulty list of “All My Favorite Movies,” which somehow included Jaws II (which, even at the tender age of nine, I had registered in my mind as pure cinematic poo) and Saturday Night Fever (which I had never seen).

When I was 11 years old I was pained by my feeble attempt to capture the inner thoughts of a grade schooler, and I tore every last page of that journal out of the book – including the one where I had penned “A Current List of All My Girlfriends,” featuring 1) Marci Payne, whom I had loved from kindergarten through third grade, 2) “Christy,” who had been a senior camp counselor at Outdoor Education when I was in fourth grade, 3) Linda “Wonder Woman” Carter, the first woman who made me realize I had "feelings” for the opposite sex, and 4) Olivia Newton-John, of Grease, Xanadu, and “Let’s Get Physical” fame.

With the embarrassing pages torn out of my journal, I started anew. But the inner workings of a young man between the ages of 12 and 14 should in all honesty never find themselves transferred to the written word. More painful than any fiction, my journal entries that took place during my junior high school years would completely support any philosophy behind Book Burnings. Unless you are peculiarly interested in the exact date I started wearing deodorant, my fashion standing on Parachute Pants, or my constant wondering regarding when and if my voice would stop cracking – and why, for the love of heaven, it had to keep happening in front of the now popular cheerleader and old kindergarten flame, Marci Payne.

But I kept writing, despite my wondering if I would ever really want anyone to read any of it. Finally, at the beginning of this year (2005), I actually made a goal to write less in my journal. I felt fine about it for a while. Weeks went by and I thought, “See – nothing to really even write about.” Months went by…and I started to feel a little weird. And then, just recently really, I started to really miss writing. I love to write. I love stories. And so I'm hoping that by starting this blog I will take more opportunities to do it.


So check in from time to time. Of course if I don’t like what I’m writing, I’ll most likely rip it out and throw it away. Just like I did with my journal entry about the time I plotted to ask out the girl who sat in front of me in my Spanish I class, until an unfortunate incident involving bodily functions occured in class just three weeks before I turned 16. (Not all teenage boys belch on purpose, you know!) Que lastima!