April 26, 2001
Today should be interesting: my boss is getting a new boss, and we're going to meet him for the first time today. There's not really much I can say about it yet, since all the details are still a little vague. But it should be... well.... interesting. :)
Today is our shower-less day and I keep wondering why it is that I feel so much cleaner after a shower than a sponge bath. I'm sure I used twice as much soap today as I usually do and that I smell very much like the raspberry-ish liquid stuff that I use. I know in my head that I'm nice and clean but this definitely feels weird. (Bruce isn't going to like this even one little bit. The drive to work today should be interesting.) Anyway, it makes me think about the past and wonder how people in other times did it. Saturday night really was bath night not so long ago. The pioneers and others who gradually moved across this continet certainly didn't have the luxury of daily baths. When did we reach a point where the daily shower / bath was not just accepted, but also expected? (This is not a complaint, mind you. I like having a shower every day.... I'm just curious about how we got to the point where it is the norm.)
When I was growing up, no one I knew washed their hair every day. No, it's not because I only knew dirty people. :P I could be wrong about this, but I don't think that daily shampooing really got started until sometime in the 70's, with the advent of blow dryers. (Or "hot combs" as we called them way back when.) Except perhaps for men and women with short hair. I'm not positive on any of this, of course.
Yes, we literally did have nights where we had to stay home to wash our hair. We washed and set it, then either sat under a hair dryer for anywhere from 2-4 hours, or went to bed with a scalp full of incredibly uncomfortable curlers. Then, sometime in the late 60's or early 70's, someone sold the first hot comb / blow dryer, and our lives really changed. The shampoo people must have been delirious when this all started, since I'm sure sales skyrocketed practically overnight.
Here's something I learned somewhere-or-other: those who manufacture human-hair wigs are rarely if ever willing to purchase American hair. This is because we wash it so much that we damage it. No one wants to buy an American hair wig. Heh. Isn't that interesting? I wonder if, in another 20-30 years, we're going to have a whole generation of bald old ladies. Hmmmm
I know. I think about lots of odd stuff. But not as much as that other goober over there does. ;)
