Creative Writing: Soap is Soap

I was born into a bar soap family that bought family size packs, meaning that I would be using the same kind of soap for the next eighteen years of my life. In my early teens, I would watch commercials starring a long haired brunette taking a slow motion shower. She would use a fancy soap that wasn’t sold in bulk packaging and her skin would glisten. After she was done, she would run her hand up her arm to show how smooth it was. When I did that against my own skin, I felt bumps and dry skin. I wanted to be that brunette! I suggested that we should buy one of those “fancy brands” that was on TV to my father.

“Irish Spring not good enough for you?” he asked.

“I want that fancy soap from the commercial,” I answered.

“I could get six bars of Irish Spring for the same price as one of those fancy bars,” he calculated.

“It’s because the fancy soap is better.”

“Soap is soap,” he stated then walked away, indicating the end of the conversation.

The packaging of those fancy soaps was memorizing. I was drawn to the bright colors, the wispy text, and that long haired brunette. I would throwaway our bars of soap, telling my dad that we were out. I would tag along to store and when he wasn’t looking, I would slide that fancy soap into the cart. He would always find it because when the cashier would tell him the total, he would go over the prices of everything he picked up and discover the discrepancy. The cashier would remove the soap from the bag with sympathetic eyes.

But when I had money of my own and a car, my fancy soap dreams would become a reality. I walked proudly down the bath needs aisle, looking at all the nice packaging. They all had pictures of fruits and leaves on the bottles, telling the customer that their product was the best because it was natural and it had pronounceable ingredients. I was set against getting bar soap; I would get body wash, the kind that the new brunette uses in the new commercial.

The bottle I chose was lovely sea foam green. It boasted that its main ingredient, sea kelp, would solve any dry skin problems due to its penetrating course crystals. I was so excited that I took a shower right when I got home at four in the afternoon. The contents of the bottle were like wet sand and when it flowed down my body it left a trail of itching skin. It echoed the feeling of coming out of the ocean and sensing sand collecting in your bathing suit where you did not want it to collect. When I got out of the shower I expected my skin to sparkle but it was normal, Irish Spring normal. How could that be? I sensed that the ingredients would be able to answer my question.

The first entry was water. Of course, what could be more natural than water? Then sea salt extract, which would explain that beach feeling. The next ingredient was Pacific sea kelp. Okay, so far so good. But the next item was what worried me: Methyl Ether. I was pretty sure that I never saw this item on a produce stand or at the beach. I was positive that Methyl Ether did not grow on trees or on the ocean floor. After a quick internet search, I found out that I could not comprehend the sea of scientific jargon flashing before me. What I did could understand were the words propellant, propane, and combustible. After careful thought and consideration, I threw the bottle away and placed a new bar of Irish Spring on the soap tray.