By Patrick Payette
Columnist

I was in the department store the other day looking to buy some shampoo. As I looked up and down the aisle at the three shelves filled with various brands, types and “problem solving” shampoos, it occurred to me that the aisle looked very similar to my shower at home.

Having a wife and two daughters means a shower filled with every hair care product known to woman, for virtually any type of hair problem nature can throw at us. We have shampoos with and without conditioner. We have shampoos designed specifically for oily hair. After you use the one for oily hair a few times, you switch to the one for dry scalp. The dry scalp most likely being caused by the use of the oily hair shampoo, which is basically diluted gasoline with a little perfume added.

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I asked my wife why we needed to have so many shampoo varieties.

“Because your hair gets used to one after you use it a while, and it doesn’t work anymore.” She told me.

Interesting theory.

Since I don’t wear my glasses in the shower, I use the first bottle I grab and hope for the best. If it foams up, it’s shampoo. If it doesn’t, it’s conditioner. If I am lucky, I end up grabbing one that smells somewhat masculine. I don’t want to go to work smelling like a pina colada.

Since we are on the subject, whatever happened to the single bar of soap I was used to when I was growing up? Now we have at least two bars of soap – for different needs, something that comes in a shampoo-type bottle called “body wash,” and some paste with sand granules in it you spread on with a wooden spatula.

“What’s that funny smelling stuff in the shower with the dirt in it?” I ask my wife.

“You didn’t use my apple butter spread did you? And it’s not dirt, it’s pumice,” she said.

“No, I didn’t use it. I thought we put apple butter spread on toast. Why is it in the shower and why does it have dirt, I mean, ‘pumice,’ in it?” I asked.

“It’s a special cleanser my sister sent me from Colorado. The pumice exfoliates,” she explained.

“Oh, exfoliates.” I pretend like I have a clue what we’re talking about.

“That would mean we have to have foliates before we can ex-foliate them. What are foliates,” I ask, looking to enrich my database of why women think, and do what they do.

“Patrick, exfoliate means it removes the dead skin and leaves your skin smooth and soft.”

The only shower that regularly stocks a greater variety of cleaners, soaps and shampoos than ours is my mother-in-law’s. I would venture to say there may be up to 15 different choices at any given time. Taking a shower at my mother-in-law’s can be an adventure.

If you look, you’ll notice shampoo bottles are not designed with stability in mind. On top of that, the shelves in showers are usually about half as wide as the stuff you want to store on them.

Shampoo bottles easily fall off the shelf, and the full ones can cause severe pain when they land on your toes. I remember watching one bottle starting to slip out of its space at my mother-in-law’s. In my attempt to rescue it before it committed shampoo-a-cide, I hit the one next to it. This started a domino reaction, knocking all 15 varieties from their shelf and onto my feet. This was not only pain, but also a great deal of noise.

“Patrick. Stop fooling around in the shower and let’s go. Breakfast is ready and we’re waiting on you,” my wife yelled to me.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” I yelled, as I looked at the knee-deep bottle collection.

“Does your mother want these shampoo bottles in alphabetical order, by color or by type?”

– Patrick Payette can be reached at patdunbarton@peoplepc.com, if he can find his computer.

The Single Cynic will alternate weeks with the Married Cynic.