Things They Don't Cover In Marriage Prep Class, Installment #2

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It is likely that you will cover “Expectations” in your marriage prep meetings, as most couples enter marriage with unreasonable ones. Most unreasonable expectations usually involve having one or both spouses-to-be thinking that not much is going to change once you’re hitched. For example, I expected everything to be the same, except there would be sex. Lynda expected everything to be the same, except that someone would be around to kill spiders, take care of the lawn, and vacuum clean.

If you have any such illusions, you’d best get past them now.

Of course, this is why you have marriage prep, and I won’t rehash anything they’re going to cover. I’ll warn you about the stuff you won’t hear about. For instance:

The first thing in your life that will get radically made over, believe it or not, will be your shower. Looking inside my shower on, say, March 14 (a month before the wedding), you would have seen:

• A bar of Irish Spring, The Official Soap Of Sheer G—damn Manliness
• A bottle of shampoo
• A bottle of conditioner, the same bottle which, due to lack of use, had been there since the Clinton administration

That’s it. That’s all I needed. No fuss.

Then I got married.

Of course, I was well aware that Lynda would add a veritable cornucopia of shower products to the scene. When I first ventured into her bathroom while we were dating and observed the vast array of bottles lining the ledges of her shower, I was compelled to ask her “How many people live here?”. When she assured me that she lived alone, I surmised that she must have what is known in the female vernacular as “combination skin”, which apparently means that every square inch of her body requires a different cleanser. Of course, these various products are not just supposed to get her clean and smelling nice; according to the print on these bottles, they are supposed to remoisturize, revitalize, rejuvenate, resuscitate, resurrect, reanimate, enliven, enhance, empower, reenergize, repair, renew, refresh, and reinvigorate her. While men’s products are designed to have a man come out of the shower clean and ready for polite society, women’s products are apparently designed to have a woman come out of the shower like Christ coming out of the tomb.

So the shower became rather crowded with fruity-smelling bottles. Oh, well, to each his (or her) own, right? Nope. I was about to fall victim to the post-wedding process of

Insidious Female Bath Product Creep

I was soon informed that my bar soap left a residue that was harder to clean than that of any in her menagerie of liquid soaps – a problem I addressed as a bachelor by simply never cleaning the shower. No sooner had she made this proclamation than my bar of Irish Spring was replaced with a bottle of……Dove Exfoliating Body Scrub.

Christ almighty, Dove? What’s next, am I supposed to start wearing floral prints and listening to Justin Timberlake? And just what the hell is “Exfoliating”? I suspected it was some process by which testosterone is sucked out of my body and replaced with a mysterious chemical that would compel me to leave the toilet seat down. Lynda informed me that exfoliating was just the removal of dead skin, which is OK, I guess. I wasn’t too crazy about the switch, but I gave it a shot. My new soap was a white creamy mixture with little blue specks in it: it was a little like washing yourself with ranch dressing. And it never – and I mean never – quite felt like it washed completely off. Ugh.

After the bottle of Dove ran dry, Lynda said she’d find something she thought I would like better (or at least not hate as much), and settled on……Aveeno Body Wash with Colloidal Oatmeal. This is a step up? Oatmeal? I’m washing with breakfast foods now? If I must, couldn’t it be something a little more manly, like bacon and eggs? And just what in the name of all that is holy is “Colloidal”? It sounds like the stuff The Blob was made out of.

After (warily) using the Aveeno stuff for awhile, I was out shopping at the local Walgreens when I discovered my salvation from the parade of wussy bath products being imposed upon me: Liquid Irish Spring. I bought a whole case of it. The Official Soap Of Sheer G—damn Manliness is now back in my shower where it belongs.

So beware, Tom, of the life-sucking process known as Insidious Female Bath Product Creep. First they take your freedom, then your soap, then on to your vital bodily organs. Don’t let it happen to you.

Consider yourself warned.