I do some of my best thinking in the shower. Just me, hot water, a bar of soap and a wandering mind.

(By the way, when you tell someone you took a shower and you receive a standing ovation is it important to clarify whether or not you removed your clothes before hand? Or is that detail pretty much understood except by most people in Congress who, if their clothes are soaking wet every morning when they arrive at the Immigrant Inquisition, might have difficulty getting re-elected?)

Not so long ago I stood in the shower and started thinking about a sports report on TV. Our big slugger was placed on the Disabled List because he “tweaked his groin.” And while I was soaping my bald spot I had this thought: Do we really need to know a ballplayer ‘tweaked his groin?’ What does that even mean? If it’s what I think it means, wasn’t that a mortal sin back in the day when nuns had to be licensed wrestlers?

An unconnected thought (UT) popped into my wandering soapy mind: To keep from forgetting important meetings and chores, you should write things down on a to-do list, then draw a line through each one when it is completed.

Remember, if you don’t put it on your list you can’t draw a line through it. Drawing a line through an item on a to-do list is one of those joys that separate us from animals, the people who wear pointy sheets to meetings and those who like to find excuses to say groin.

So. One recent day I went to the store for a new brick of brindle-colored, wash-your-mouth-out-with-brown-soap Fels Naptha (good and so good for you.) Also, I was getting the shakes and an eye tic and badly needed to draw a line through something, anything, on my to do list.

I found the soap aisle packed with man-sized bottles of what appeared to be shampoo or hippopotamus glue. The store brazenly called it body wash.

“Where’s the Fels Naptha?” I queried a passing stock boy. He looked at me as if I’d come from the 20th century. The early part. With all the world wars.

“The soap,” I said.

“You’re standing in front of it.”

“No, the bar soap.”

“You mean bar wash? Two aisles over between the car wash and the sump pump wash.”

“I just want to take a shower.”

“With clothes on, or off?”

Impertinent, I thought, for a stock boy. But then I realized I was talking to a millennial. He stepped forward and grabbed a bottle of something called Axe.

“Axe wash?” I protested. “But I don’t own an axe.”

“It’s the scent of Anarchy.”

“Wow. I love the smell of Anarchy in the morning.”

“You’ll need this, too.” He shoved a rough item into my hand. “It’s like a sponge but it’s actually an exfoliating mesh loofa pouf.”

“Pouf?” I asked, horrified. “I have to wash with a…a…pouf?” But by then the stock boy had moved on, as millennials so often do.

So I took the Axe and the pouf home. I removed most of my clothes, stood under the shower and poured some of the axe onto my pouf. (It just sounds wrong.) It was orange, the color of radiator coolant, but it had a scent vaguely reminiscent of a perspiring marimba player in old Meh-he-co.

According to Google, that’s exactly what anarchy smells like. With just one whiff I suddenly felt like overthrowing the government — and might have, if it hadn’t already been done.

Now I use my semi-automatic, gas-operated, clip-fed, dead-skin-exfoliating lavender loufa pouf for overthrowing the K-Mac regime here at home. Hasn’t worked so far; sometimes I feel like K-Mac knows a little too much about what I’m thinking. (Note for to-do list: Stop using my outside voice inside.)

Anyway, anarchy wasn’t built in a day. So I’m giving it a full week. And a half.

Until then, I just dare you to knock this pouf off my shoulder.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2018, all rights reserved.