There should be a law against people who smell bad. And this is coming from a guy who on many occasions was smellier than Taco Bell on a bad bean day. This law of mine would be directly aimed out those foreign exchange students (from France, I think) who could walk into a Dollar Store and whose body odor would drown out the Chinesesium smell of all the merchandise.
If I asked you what you thought most American’s preferred, a bath or a shower, what would you say? In a recent poll of Americans 57% of the people chose the smart answer which is shower, while 32% preferred to sit in their own filth and take a bath. By my count that leaves 11% and I assume these are the exchange students from France and Russia who take neither. Yakov Smirnoff, the Russian comedian once said, “I like American women. They do things sexually Russian girls would never think of doing… like showering.”
I admit that my preference for showers is a direct result of being being third in line through the bathwater. First was my dad, second was the “exalted one” my older brother, and then there was me. You’ve heard the phrase “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water?” Well, I was that baby and you might not have seen me through all the murky water.
Another phrase you’ve probably heard is “rural cleansing”. This is what happened every Saturday night in farm and ranch houses across the country. My Grandpa told me that every farm had a big old tub which was filled with hot water on Saturday night. The first one through was the father followed by the sons in descending order of age. No wonder if you were the eleventh son that your nickname at school was “Stinky”.
But these were the lucky folks. Before that most people got married in June because they were still smelling pretty good following their ANNUAL bath in May. But even in June the betrothed were both pretty ripe so the bride carried flowers to mask the smell and this is where that custom got its start, much to the pleasure of flower shop owners.
Did you know that the White House didn’t have a permanently installed bathtub until 1850? This meant that all the Presidents before Millard Fillmore smelled like they just cleaned out the hog barn. One wonders, how did they ever get re-elected?
It wasn’t that long ago that American farm boys were sewed into their long johns in November and didn’t take them off until March! Later generations, of course, took a bath every Saturday whether they needed it or not.
I often wonder what our soldiers did in World War II when they were fighting for the freedom to be filthy. How did they get clean in the trenches and in the tanks? All I know is the famous writer Ernie Pyle said that if you go long enough without a bath even the fleas will leave you alone. And what did the cowboys who drove the great herds up from Texas in the 1880’s do for a bath? Some of them couldn’t even find enough water to drink let alone take a bubble bath.
Personally, the longest I’ve ever gone without a bath or a shower was seven days and that’s because I was in a coma and I didn’t do all that much hard, sweaty work while comatose so I’m sure I didn’t stink much. But taking me home from the hospital in the car my wife wore my 3M mask with replaceable cartridges that firemen wear to breathe cleaner air.
I’ve never resided in areas with high humidity and I don’t know how people do it who live in places like Florida or Washington DC. In the South I always felt dirtier by the time I got out of the shower than I did before I got in. It was so disgusting seeing all the men and women sweating through their armpits. (No relation).
I remember being in a big-city eastern restroom that had the first deodorant dispenser I ever saw. I’ve always been an Old Spice guy and I could use a swipe or two and the dispenser supposedly had some so I put in my money only to discover that the machine was “out of odor.”
