LEFT BEHIND

These days, people who subscribe to newspapers feel very superior to those loony-tunes who desperately drive from store to store looking for toilet paper. Even A-I can’t help. It only goes to prove that during urgent times, on-line shopping is no substitute for the Sears and Roebuck catalog. Stockpiling toilet paper, because of the coronavirus, makes no sense, since the only diarrhea connected to the disease is the verbal kind coming out of politicians mouths.

So, just for fun, I decided to look on the shelves at Target to see what people left behind. I wandered over to the soap section, and a sign was posted, “Only one soap product to a customer.” Most of the soaps were gone, but I noticed that body washes were still available. After all, the CDC instructed us to wash our hands—not our entire bodies. So, what body washes were left?

If I had purchased the first body wash, I could,”Smell Like Rain.” I’m not sure what rain smells like, but when it rains in Tucson, Arizona, the place smells like Creosote bushes. I don’t want a “Musky,Earthy Smell,” that helps my body preserve water. The  Spanish name for Creosote is “Hediondilla” which loosely translates into “little stinker.”

The next bottle of body wash was a “Limited Edition of Ocean Drift.” I figured it was probably limited because the oceans are drifting around filled with plastic waste, and I don’t want to smell like I’ve been recycled.

Then there was the “Flower Child Fragrance.” For those of you who remember the unwashed bodies of the Woodstock Generation—NO THANK YOU!  

Nor, did I want to smell like the next bottle that had a “Sea Kelp Fragrance.” I remember swimming in the ocean in Florida and getting that stuff tangled around my feet. I guess that would be a great body wash for people who enjoy smelling like dead fish.

Finally, I bought a bottle of “Vitality Shower Gel.” I don’t know what it smells like, but I hope that it will give me the survival capacity that I need—-if I run out of toilet paper.
Esther Blumenfeld