When I was a kid growing up in southern California, I’d try to escape the blistering summer heat by playing in the sprinklers on the front lawn or floating submerged in a public swimming pool until my fingers turned to prunes. I counted those hours under water as part of my daily hygienic practices. My mother didn’t.
At that age I didn’t know that the reason they chlorinated the water so heavily was because my classmates were peeing or Hershey squirting in the water. It looked clean to me. The way I looked at it, as long as I spent every day under water, I could go the entire summer without having to bathe. Since that time, I’ve learned a lot about good hygiene practices, but have committed to only a few. It’s not that I have anything against being clean – I just have better things to do with my time than shower, wash my hair, brush my teeth and clean underneath my fingernails.
I wasn’t interested in girls while in grammar school, so I wasn’t particularly concerned about how I smelled. To be honest, I was completely oblivious to it. On occasion, I was known to turn my T-shirts inside out to get a few more days wear out of them before they were candidates for the laundry hamper. Walk into any 6th grade classroom and you’ll get hit with the same smell: a pungent mixture of body odor, crayons and peanut butter sandwiches with a little bit of urine thrown in. It’s called the smell of kids.
My father used to try to goad me into bathing regularly by regaling me with hygiene tales from his childhood. Being the youngest in a clan of 8, every Saturday night his father made him walk barefoot through the snow to fetch buckets of clean water from the local creek. They’d heat the water on the stove, then pour it into the bath tub that sat prominently in the middle of the kitchen. Starting with his mother, each member of the family would bathe and wash their hair. By the time it was his turn, the water had turned battleship gray and looked like a giant bowl of vegetable soup with a layer of soap and dead skin floating on the surface. Needless to say, as a young man he grew to appreciate a hot, daily shower.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 884 million people in the world have limited access to clean water. Even though Western countries do, we still persist in practicing some pretty odd hygiene habits. During the 1970s running craze, I remember reading an article by a Houston cardiologist who was a running guru and wrote for Runner’s World Magazine. He insisted that there was a difference between perspiration and good old fashioned sweat. Perspiration was dirty. Sweat was clean. So, he would run to work every day and “towel off” before putting on his suit and lab coat. Fortunately, he wasn’t married and worked in a research lab so he didn’t have to come into direct contact with many people.
Americans are unique in that most of us take a shower every day because we have plenty of water. Even in parts of Western Europe, taking a daily shower is considered extravagant. And, it’s not likely you’ll find kids in Bangladesh having water balloon fights or careening down Slip n’ Slides. Most of them still don’t have indoor plumbing, so they sponge bathe like my father did. East Asian countries don’t have toilets as we know them. Instead of commodes that allow you to sit while pinching a loaf, you have to squat in the catcher’s position. Of course, that would never work in the United States. With more than half of the population being pathetically obese, they’d blow out their knees and have to be carried out of the restroom with their pants dangling around their ankles. On the other hand, we’ve developed a cottage industry for toilet seat risers and handles that seat you higher. It appears that we’re moving in the opposite direction from the rest of the world.
Soft, absorbent toilet paper is also uniquely American. While visiting Munich one summer, the first thing I noticed was theirs must have been made out of recycled grocery bags. Instead of cleaning your brown-eyed Willy, it would just smear everything around. East Asian countries don’t use toilet paper. Instead, you’ll find a bucket with a ladle sitting on the floor next to every squat toilet. After squeezing a steamer, people clean themselves with water, using their left hand to dry. That’s why there are two things you’ll never see in Asian adults: 1) shaking hands with their left hand and 2) skidmarks in their undies. Skidmarks are uniquely American and a constant reminder that we could being doing things better. The term doesn’t even exist in the Vietnamese language.
Of course there are other hygiene practices to ponder besides keeping your alimentary exits clean. According to Dr. Oz, Oprah Winfrey’s popular medical personality, the average adult picks their nose 5 times an hour. What they do with the result of these mining expeditions is anyone’s guess. As a kid, I remember eating a few – but that was a long time ago. Still, they have to go somewhere. Look around. What’s that hanging from the edge of your desk? And, what about brushing your teeth, crop dusting, cactus legs and washing your hands after visiting the restroom? It’s always baffled me why restrooms in restaurants have large, yellow stickers reminding employees that it’s a federal offense to go back into the kitchen without washing their hands. I’ve personally never needed to be blackmailed with a felony to wash my hands after dropping a dookie. It just comes naturally. What I do have a problem with is electric dryers in place of paper towels.
We’ve all experienced it. You scrub up, rinse and look around for the towel dispenser. In its place is that impudent air drier. If I had noticed it before, I might not have washed my hands. With no other option besides drying your hands on the front of your shirt, you stand there, rubbing your hands together until they’re red, chapped and bleeding. And, what do you do if you just washed your face? Inevitably, you’ll squat down on all fours, pointing your face into the jet stream until your hair stands on end or your mascara has melted half way across your face.
I’m not going to try to convince you that I have exceptional hygienic standards. There’s still a little bit of the kid left in me that’ll resort to a Pirate Bath or wearing last chance undies. Under exceptional circumstances, I’ve been known to take a Febreze shower or sniff the armpits of a shirt I want to wear. If the results are inconclusive, I’ll douse them in English Leather. That’ll usually get me by until I can convince myself that there’s nothing wrong with wearing the same shirt for the rest of the week. Or, turning it inside out.
