Stinky soap and hippies

I recently had to stop wearing deodorant on a regular basis. My current brand seems to have the unfortunate side effect of making my armpits itch mercilessly. Unfortunately, I bought it at a warehouse club, so I have two more rather large sticks of it under the sink, and, as of yet, I've been unable to mount the courage necessary to buy a different brand until I've used up the stockpile that I currently possess.

I'm hoping that the stuff will evaporate on its own, thereby relieving me of the momentous decision of wasting a perfectly useful stick of deodorant.

But I digress. My deodorant woes let me to make a few important discoveries.

For one, I have a terrible BO problem. I'd never noticed it before, thanks to the fine folks at Mennen, but I really do. A couple of days after I stopped wearing deodorant, I woke up one morning to a horrible stench. It was a Saturday, and both of my children had already joined Shnoogs and me in bed. They enjoy watching cartoons in our room in the mornings. "Good morning Daddy!" Munchee said as he came over to give me a hug. As he drew near though, he crinkled up his little nose and said "You smell bad. Why do you smell so bad?"

There was no denying it though, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why I smelled. I am usually the type who takes two showers every day. I like to take on in the morning before work, and then I take one after working out at night.

I decided not to dwell on it though. I simply took a shower.

Unfortunately, this was the beginning of a pattern. Every day, I would wake up funky. I was beginning to think that something was seriously wrong with me. I was showering regularly and everything, but to no avail.

Then, one day, I figured it out.

One night, I ran out of soap in the shower, so I opted to use the kids' bath soap instead. I pilfered Shnoogs' mesh ball shower thingy and proceeded to give myself a good scrubbing.

The next morning, when I woke up, I smelled great. It was one of the happiest mornings of my life. I went downstairs and offered an armpit to Shnoogs. "Smell this" I said. She refused of course, but I was persistent. Eventually, even she agreed that I didn't small "that bad".

Being a methodically scientific person that I am, I had to verify the results of course. I kept using the baby soap, and much to my delight, I kept smelling great.

This got me to thinking; maybe the hippies have been right all along. It stands to reason that the baby soap is less powerful that the bar soap I had been using, and yet I smelled better. Perhaps, if I stopped using soap entirely, I would eventually smell so great that I would be able to hypnotize people like Dracula. It made sense in a way. Most people practically never wash their backs, but when was the last time you noticed somebody's back odor?

So for the week or so, I didn't use any soap at all in the shower (with the exception of one or two body parts which I won't mention).

Turns out, the hippies were wrong. I definitely had started to develop an odor by the end of the week. I mentioned this to a few of my hippier friends, and they informed me that, while cutting back on my personal hygiene was a great thing, and that it would bring me closer to nature, the brainwashed society we live in today wasn't ready to accept atypical bathing habits.

Also, for good measure, I should douse myself regularly in patchouli oil so that nobody could tell how natural I smelled.

In retrospect, none of this should have come as a surprise. I remember various hippies that my parents knew when I was growing up, and while none of them smelled good enough to hypnotize anybody, there certainly was a strong patchouli odor most of the time.

Still, I'm fascinated by the idea that washing regularly with bar soap (which in my case, was also 1/4 moisturizer) can actually make a person smell worse. Maybe your body compensates for the lack of dirt by secreting more oil?

I guess it makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. When God created Adam and Eve, there is no mention in the Bible of him also hooking them up them with a lifetime supply of Lever 2000. For thousands of years, people pretty much only got clean when it either rained or they found a river to splash around in. (I wonder if ancient people used a lot of patchouli oil.)

Of course, other than the French, nobody would dream of doing that today, but I guess there is such a thing as too much washing. All things in moderation, right?