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No Rinse Shampoo

General

The other day I was laying next to Alan in his hospital bed and was getting lost in the scenery outside. We were up on the fourth floor and from that vantage point, all I could see outside were tall, towering trees and a sky lit up purple, pink, yellow and orange. If I just focused on the view, I could almost pretend that we were vacationing in a lodge somewhere. I was reading Zeitoun, he was reading nerdy WoW forums, both of us relaxed and quiet. Except for the incessant beeping around us, everything was still. I was waiting for someone to ring a tinkling bell to call us into the grand dining room for dinner when something brought my attention back. It smelled like In N Out. What was that smell? I sat up and looked to my left, a table of Ensures. I looked to my right, an IV stand of fake food dripping into Alan’s veins. Where is it coming from? I sat back and inhaled a few times more. It was nice (who doesn’t like In N Out?) but offensive at the same time. A few more careful sniffs and I realized what it was. It was Alan’s arm pits.

“Is that your arm pits?” I asked incredulously. (How could one’s armpits smell like that?)
He leaned his head over, took a whiff, and leaned back. “Yeah,” he said, all matter of fact, and then turned back to his reading.
That’s your arm pits?” I repeated, just in case he hadn’t understood the situation.
“I know,” he said.
I don’t know what made me sadder — the fact that Alan had been in the hospital for so long that small animals had burrowed into his arm pit hairs and proceeded to crack rotten eggs before curling up and dying or the fact that he didn’t care that these animals had taken advantage of the free rent.
I couldn’t stand to have him smelling sort of like one of my favorite foods and sort of like dead animals, so I ordered in a bucket of soap and a bucket of water and we gave him a sort of bath (which is really the only thing you can call the baths you are allowed inside hospital rooms). The nurses must not have understood the stength of the arm pit smell because they brought us yet another small bottle of Johnson’s Head to Toe Baby Wash. Johnson’s Head to Toe Baby Wash is fine for washing some people, people that barely smell, people that barely smell so much they smell brand new — people like babies. But it definitely does not cut it for washing a full grown man. It was the best we could do and it helped a little, which was better than nothing.
Though, in the hospital’s defense, to make up for their sorry body wash, they do have an incredible shampoo — No Rinse Shampoo by CleanLife Products. Hallelujah! Can this stuff lather! And you don’t even have to wet your hair first or rinse it out. You just squirt it all over your head, lather it up, then towel dry. It has so impressed me that I’ve slowly been gathering all the bottles of it I can get my hands on. You know, for those days when you just can’t be bothered with those annoying extra steps. Rinsing, towel drying? Psh, who needs them?

Last modified: January 10, 2019