Ok, I was just reading the comments on a post over at the bloggess, and everyone over there was talking about their neuroses and phobias and compulsions, and while I have a lot of weird hangups, I think that there is one thing that I have got to FINALLY get off my chest and out in the open. It's time.
I'm just going to take a deep breath, and put it out there.
I hate soap.
People, I am so serious right now. Please don't walk away while I'm vulnerable. I'm not sure when or how this began. I think it has something to do with a) the way it dries out my skin and b) how slippery and ICKY it feels. Now, don't get me wrong, I bathe, I wash, ok? It's really only bar soap that we're talking about here. I thought that once I became an adult, I could use shower gel for the rest of my life and never have to worry about this again. But then I dated a guy that thought he knew what was best for me better than I did, and believed that shower gel was not real soap, and did not get you as clean as bar soap would, and refused to use my shower gel when he stayed at my place. And because I was young and stupid and thought he knew more than me and wanted him to stop implying that I was dirty, I bought bar soap. And I can use it, ok? BUT. This my personal procedure for the use of bar soap:
1) Have loofah, at the ready, in right hand.
2) Pick up soap, CAREFULLY, with left hand.
2b) God help you if you get soap under your fingernails.
3) Hold soap carefully in dead center of left hand, avoiding pruny fingertips and fingernails.
4) While holding soap stationary, rub loofah vigorously over it, working up a good lather.
5) Return soap quickly but CAREFULLY to its place.
5b) Don't you dare drop that soap! If you drop it, how will you pick it up without letting it touch your fingertips or fingernails? It will have to sit in the bottom of the tub until your boyfriend comes over.
The more quickly you can get this done and get the soap out of your hands, the more points you get. So, see? I can use bar soap, provided I am given the freedom to work within my very rigid soap-use guidelines. And by the way, NO, there is nothing wrong with using a damn loofah. You may be able to convince me that shower gel doesn't get you as clean as bar soap (even though that is a DAMN lie), but you are not going to convince me that the loofah is also somehow a liability. Plus, the bottom line is: if the only way for me to get clean is for me to actually HOLD SOAP IN MY HAND for an extended period of time, the time it takes me to clean my entire body, then by God, the water better be extra-germ-killing hot that day, because I'm damn sure not touching that soap.
(In case you were wondering, it is permissible for me to touch a dry bar of soap with dry hands. Hey! I could even carve it into something, if you like!)
You know, now that I'm reflecting on it, the issue probably has more to do with the increased sensitivity of my pruny hands than it does with the soap itself. This all goes back to my childhood, when I still took baths under the supervision of my mom, and would demand her to dry my hands off with a "kwof" each and every time they got wet. True, we were fighting a losing battle, since I was sitting in a tub full of water at the time. But what can I say? I was precocious, and my mother is a saint. Anyway, the point is that even when soap is not an issue, the pruniness still upsets me. Because of this, the shower has rules, much like Fight Club, except it's not a club, it's my private insanity:
1) You do not touch things unnecessarily with the pruny hands
2) You do not touch one pruny body part with another (hands touching each other, hands touching feet)
3) You must moisturize your legs as soon as you exit the shower, whether or not you have shaved them (this has the added benefit of moisturizing your hands, also)
4) You must put on socks as soon as you exit the shower, so that you don't have to think about how pruny and dry and gross and sensitive your feet are
5) If you have just taken a shower and your hands have not yet plumped up to their usual level of elasticity, don't you dare touch me
6) OMFG GET THE SOAP AWAY FROM MY PRUNY HANDS AND FEET.
Also, because you're obviously riveted by all this talk about how insane I am (and what's one more numbered list?), here are a few other textures/things that upset me irrationally:
1) Bananas
2) Pears
3) Socks bunched up in my shoes
4) Underwear
5) Too-tight pants
6) The sound of metal scraping against metal (You People that cut your steak by putting the knife in-between the tines of your fork? You are on notice.)
7) Wet food from the sink
8) Certain types of textured plastic
So, I have 2 questions for you: Does anybody out there share some of these problems? And if you're a guy, do you too have some kind of vendetta against shower gel and loofahs?
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