Sept. 25, 2022

A Facebook post from September 25, 2022 - expounded

    Recently I was in the shower and looking at the shampoo bottles around my bathtub when an oddly potent memory that I hadn't relived in years struck me. When I was maybe 12-13 years old, I was encouraged by my mother to attend a local church as a means to expand my social circle. At that time I was pretty content to sit in my room and read so I didn't get out much or make that many friends but that's not the point of this story. 

    I started going to that church and made many friends there, including an older retired couple whose names I sadly no longer remember. They were a very kind and generous couple, and they had a lake cabin nearby. Some Sundays after church they would bring me out to their place to swim and play. These were great salt of the earthy folks, the gentleman showed me how to fire a rifle. It was an air rifle. I don't know if Mom ever knew that he did that. He taught me the BRAS acronym which I definitely giggled at, which stands for Breathe, Relax, Aim, Squeeze, for those who are wondering. Anyways, and always, I digress.

    Something in particular from this time in my life came to mind. After a few occasions of visiting with these wonderful people, I was sternly scolded for using too much shampoo when showering after swimming in the lake. I say sternly now, as an adult but as a child, I felt attacked and hurt. And I felt like I must have done something terrible to have upset this person. I had never heard this woman so much as raise her voice and suddenly she was there wagging a finger in my face with this accusation of egregious shampoo usage. I remember thinking fearfully that I wasn't really aware of how much shampoo was too much. It never occurred to me that shampoo was some kind of precious commodity that must be conserved for some reason. I mean, who cares right? You can always get more! Ah, the naivety of the young man who has never had to buy and pay for anything. But mostly, I remember that it was so unlike this woman to be upset with anyone, and to be so with me about that shampoo has stuck with me all these years.

    Why did this occur to me recently with some TMI? At this point in my life, I'd say I shower an average of 13 out of 14 days. That is, I might not shower one day out of every couple of weeks. Of those, I might not wash my hair with shampoo for one or two days. And all this occurred to me recently when I realized that, since I bought my house in 2019 I have used exactly two bottles of shampoo. One I brought with me when I left the trailer I shared with NC and one that a houseguest left behind. (Neither is empty!) So, some 35-odd years later, I'm still using the "dime-sized" dollop of shampoo that I was castigated to use by a woman I barely knew as a tween... (Don't worry all the money I've saved on shampoo over the years has gone into whiskey and cigars.)

    The things we say and do, especially with our younger friends, will have ripples we can't imagine throughout their lives. We are all struggling so much to get by these days that many of us don't have the capacity to mind our tones and words in moments that are stressful but relatively inconsequential. If there's a takeaway here I guess it's, that you can save money by just using enough shampoo and you can change someone's entire life with a small terrifying conversation. In both, a little care goes a long way.