I noticed something in my shower this morning that kind of surprised me – a bar of soap. Whoa, don’t get ahead of me here, I bathe regularly, and I use soap. But I seriously cannot remember the last time I used a bar of soap. It was probably in a hotel somewhere.
There’s a pump bottle on my lavatory that gives me a shot of liquid soap. I have a large bottle of “shower” soap that I squeeze on my cloth, but a hard bar of soap? It just seemed out of place. And I don’t really know why it’s there. I don’t even remember putting it in there. It’s probably an emergency bar that I dug out of the cabinet when the bottle went dry.
And it’s been in there for a while. I know I’ve seen it every time I bathe (which is once a day, ok? Now drop it!), but I don’t really “see” it.
I have no idea why looking at the bar of soap brought to mind the recent presidential election, but here we are. Actually, it’s about accepting something new – or accepting a new form of an old thing.
Liquid soap was once for women. My wife had this special bath lotion that she used to pamper herself. Manly men used tough soap with bits of metal and rocks in it to grind away the dirt. Ever used “Lava” soap? That was a gritty mass; sort of like sandpaper to power off the grime. So as a guy I didn’t care for that mamby pamby liquid stuff for women – until I saw a liquid soap for men. Well, at least that’s what it said on the label: FOR MEN. Those two words were all I needed to say “finally!”
It’s probably the same stuff that’s in the girlie soap, but it’s ok, because the girls won’t use the man soap, and the men won’t use the girl soap. So we will probably never know. Thank God for the marketing department.
The American public have just elected a new president. I pass credit or blame to the generic “public” since I will admit up front that my vote went to another candidate, and, no, it wasn’t the other guy. I’m a write-in voter. My vote counts basically to me alone.
Anyway, the new guy, “that one,” is not like the old guy at all. In fact, he’s not like any other guy that’s been there. For one thing he doesn’t have a name that’s been in there before. We’re used to presidents with names like George or John or Jack, William, Frank, James even a Jimmy and a Harry. And he looks different – really different. Of course, I can hardly think of two presidents who looked alike except maybe the Adams or Bush family members, and maybe some of those old time presidents whose names we only know from the history books and can’t remember ever seeing pictures. If someone looked like Millard Fillmore they probably wouldn’t brag about it anyway.
But we got a new guy, and a lot of people are afraid. There was a rumor that if he wasn’t elected there would be rioting in the streets by his supporters. I just read this morning that there’s a certain amount of rebellion from his non-supporters. Sad.
As human beings we spend more time dwelling on our differences than celebrating our similarities. One of the things that evelates our species from the rest of the life forms on this planet is not that we live in a social gathering, even elephants and naked mole rats do that, but as homo sapiens we are aware of other social groups than our own. And this country of ours contains a large number of disparate social groups all rolled into a big social group called the United States.
Maybe we need the marketing people back to put a big label on the president-elect saying “FOR THE AMERICAN PUBLIC.” Maybe would we think it’s not just for “them” and give him a try.
I’m not naive enough to believe that our new president will be universally accepted. Hell, a black man in the voting booth isn’t even universally accepted, and if you don’t believe that then you’re more naive than me.
We’ve never had a universally accepted president, anyway, but this one has more than the normal deck stacked against him. He has to battle something that no other president has had to – fear of the unknown. Some people think they know, but no one really does because he’s not president yet.
Like every president before him in my lifetime, whether my choice or not, I’ll give him a chance. After all, I gave the soap a chance.
Categories: What was I thinking?
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