You haven't seen a column from me for a few weeks because I've been off on my summer vacation. Or, as it’s come to be known, My Annual Search For Regular Hotel Soap.
Whoever was in charge of the hotels and motels account for Procter & Gamble must have retired a few years ago, because you can no longer find good old Ivory soap anyplace you stay overnight.
What you end up with are varying degrees of fancy soap. You know they're fancy because they're no longer rectangular, and they're not wrapped in paper. Instead, they're wrapped in some vacuum-sealed post-space-age clear plastic film that is tighter than the lips of a Secret Service agent watching Dick Cheney down a Wendy’s double with cheese.
Since you need that soap, you dig at it with your fingernails, leaving some nice pockmarks whose design resembles Tranquility Base. Once you have it open, you immediately sense an un-soap like aroma. Why, that would be the essence of vanilla that’s been added, which means you’ll now smell like a candle for the rest of your trip.
There are alternatives, and you’ll find them in the little collection of bottles that housekeeping has left for you on the sink counter or in the shower.
Maybe you’re the kind of person who wants to cover up that vanilla scent with something more reminiscent of a tangerine. Well, the Citrus Body Wash is for you. Then rub on a little Almond Moisturizing Lotion because, of course, the almond is the most moist of all nuts. Top yourself off with the Juniper Conditioning Shampoo and you’ve completed a veritable fragrance smorgasbord.
Perhaps you prefer your soap a little rougher. That’s when you use the soap with the brown chunks in it -- excuse me, I mean the Oatmeal Cleansing Bar, which sounds like an all-you-can-eat restaurant that serves only laxatives. Personally, I don’t want oatmeal in my soap anymore than I want soap in my oatmeal. If you have to take a breakfast product and use it in the bathroom, I’d suggest a medicine cabinet Pop-Tart dispenser.
Not all of your hotel hygiene options are that exotic. Sometimes you get something with a generic name like Bath And Shower Gel. Which is good, because who has room to pack both their Bath Gel and their Shower Gel? Thankfully, someone has merged the two technologies, and we’re all cleaner for their efforts.
The same people must make the contents of the other bottle, the one labeled Shampoo Hair And Body. This is a marvelous product for me -- even though I don’t have that much hair left on my head, I can use this stuff to keep my arm and leg hair looking lustrous and shiny. Next time you see me in short sleeves, please comment on my glow.
Shampoo bottles often lists the ingredients, including all the Latin chemical names. There must be some consumer somewhere in the world who needs that information: "My doctor tells me I’m not getting enough sodium laureth sulfate on my scalp." Ingredient number one in all shampoo is water, but one hotel shampoo I used on this trip wanted to seem more exotic than the others. They don’t want you to think they would stoop so low as to manufacture a product that is the most readily available natural resource in the world. So they list the first ingredient as "agua." I’m sure it came from an exotic Iberian spring named "El Faucet."
Once you emerge from the shower, it’s time to get dry, so you reach for your soft, fluffy, ultra-absorbent hotel towel. Unfortunately, there is no such thing. No matter how much you paid for that room, you’re still going to end up dragging some thin white rag with the texture of fine sandpaper across your body. Hotels certainly do this because people stole all of their good towels, although that’s always been a mystery to me, because people still steal the crappy towels. Are you telling me that you can afford to rent a room for the night, but you can’t afford to buy a towel for your own house?
The thing that gets me the most is that hotels are notorious for putting the towel rack right in the shower. This makes no sense. Do you store your dry towels in a nice damp spot at home? If so, you must store your Charmin in the toilet tank.
Maybe they should wrap them in that protective soap plastic. Nah, they’d be stolen even more, because that would make them "fancy."Labels: columns