by Robert LaFrance
“Oh my God!” shouted my friend Flug, who had been watching the TV behind the bar. “I just realized that the shampoo I have been using for years isn’t hypoallergenic. My life as I know it is ruined.”
Sarcasm aside, I do want to report that the marketing of liquids and sludges to clean our hair is getting a little—no, a lot—out of hand. For those ‘older’ folks (over 55) who remember the comedian Jack Benny’s TV show that used to be on between Bozo the Clown and Ed Sullivan, perhaps you remember the show in which he went out shopping for shave cream. There was Jack Benny turned loose on his neighbourhood drugstores. He came home and said to his hired man: “Rochester, I went to every drugstore in the city. I found about a dozen kinds of shave cream with about everything from lanolin to seal oil to space-age plastics, but I had to go to 42nd Street to find some with soap in it!”
A bunch of us thugs from the colony were in the club of a Tuesday afternoon, sitting around a round table—which makes sense—and talking about things while sipping some tall cool glasses of lemonade. It had been hot the past few days, crawling up around the freezing point, and we could stand the sweltering weather only so long. We’re Canadians.
It’s pretty much the same thing today with shampoo, except it is almost impossible (keep reading) to find on the store shelf a bottle that’s just called ‘shampoo’. I invite you to try it. I am being serious. I found conditioner with and without lanolin, styling gel, gluten, and beer. I found dandruff shampoo (Why would I want dandruff?), shampoo for those with split ends, dry hair, oily hair, I found shampoo with amino acid, fructis, with sheep-dip, thickening formula, coconut oil, more beer, glycol, Polysorbate 80, but on no shelf anywhere could I find a bottle marked simply ‘shampoo’.
“It’s the same with beer,” commented Finsterwald, out of the blue. “You can find red ale, mint lager, Irish red, and IPA, and nowhere can you find just plain beer.”
“And speaking of beer,” interjected Flug’s nephew George, “I just read a book by Don Cherry. He looked around the table as if he had just divulged the secret of life. We waited. “Well, you know, in that book, he talks about ‘having several glasses of pop’ with Bobby Orr or somebody. I think people should be honest about what they do, like admitting they’re drinking beer, not saying it’s pop. And I think people and companies should make a product and call it ‘shampoo’. There’s no honesty today,” he concluded as he took another sip of lemonade.
The next day I decided to go to the city - Fredericton, that haven of dreams and the occasional floodwaters. At a big drugstore downtown, I bravely searched for places that might contain what I had been seeking—shampoo. Sure enough, above one long set of shelves was a hanging sign saying ‘Shampoo and hair products’ among other things, one of them being ‘body wash’ which has replaced soap as the stuff people are supposed to wash with. In an age when we’re all supposed to be ‘scent-free’ all this stuff smells like a brothel. Not that I know…never mind.
Back to the subject of shampoo, there I was in the big city store, or in the big store in the city. Wherever I was, it looked as if I would soon find what I was looking for. There! I saw the word ‘shampoo’!
No, it was Total Clean Colour Radiant Shampoo which reminded me again of that brothel that I never visited. Then there was Total Clean Thickening, followed by Anti-Dandruff Shampoo/Conditioner, Damage Therapy, Total Repair and Intensive Repair. (I didn’t know hair washing was this dangerous.) Other labels I saw included Dry to Moisturized, Coconut Milk, Revitalizer, Colour Protection, Clear Dry Shampoo (getting close), Anti-Aging, Primed, Classic Clean, Dry Scalp Care, Itchy Scalp Care, Refresh, 2-in-1 Refresh, Sensitive Care, next to Sensitive Scalp Care, Hair Endurance for Men, Smooth and Silky, Herbal Essences, Down Under Natural, Styling Mousse, Hydralicious Featherweight Conditioner, and Shampoo.
WHAT DID I JUST SAY?
There it was! A jug of shampoo, real shampoo, about a litre of it for only two dollars. It came from Australia. The brand name was Roo-Head and it was, simply, shampoo. The world is a fit place to live after all.
Now if I could do something about world peace, hunger, poverty and recessions, I’d be a happy man, but enough is enough for one day. Maybe I’ll tackle them in the morning.
-end-
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