I've written before about Mephistopheles, the evil mother of my first wife, Em. Her sister, Mildred, was her partner in crime growing up, and even as an adult.

Mamma always told me that what a person looks like when he is 20 is the result of the genes he got from his parents, but by the time someone is 40, their face is their own damned fault. People kid that their parents told them not to make faces, because what if your face froze that way, and they laugh about it, but in fact, people who grimace and frown and scowl a lot tend to develop the musculature that makes those faces easy and comfortable to maintain, while those who mostly smile tend to develop their faces in an entirely different manner. The bumper sticker "Smile! Increase your face value!" is actually true, in the long run.

Em Grew More And More Beautiful

Em was constantly upbeat. She loved people, and loved life, and as a result, even though the SLE ravaged her body, and even though Em spent a lot of years in discomfort and outright pain, she always smiled - and she grew more and more beautiful as she aged. Mephistopheles would try to smile at a baby or at a puppy, and the smile just didn't "fit" on her face any more, after so many years of looking sour. The baby would cry. The puppy would yelp and run away. And if anything, Mildred made Mephistopheles look like a model for a cosmetics company.

When they'd get together, I'd yelp and run away. Anything you need at the store, babe? If Em said no, I'd tell her I was going to take a walk, or if it was bad weather, I was going to take a little ride, and I'd drive away. If all else failed, I'd try to remove myself to the next room. But sometimes, that didn't work, and I'd end up in the same room, listening to the two of them cackling, plotting, and gloating about the evil they'd inflicted on others.

Mephistopheles loved to hear stories of the ways that Mildred punished her husband, Eddie, for real and imagined slights. When my father in law and I were alone, we'd express sympathy for Eddie. He was, to be fair, a simpering little worm, but that's the best that Mildred had ever attracted, and he probably could have done far better. And in any case, he didn't deserve to be treated as he was.

Eddie And The Boozers

Eddie was an alcoholic. My father-in-law knew, just as I did, that alcoholism is a disease that can't be helped. On one hand, being an alcoholic doesn't mean you have to drink; it means you shouldn't drink. On the other hand, coming home to Mildred each night would make one want to drink.

Eddie was a gin drinker, and Mildred would just cackle about how she bought the gin and brought it home for Eddie, just as he requested, but she would open the bottle when she got it home, pour out half of the bottle, and refill it with water. She was fooling Eddie, and keeping him from getting so drunk.

Except, realistically, was she? Don't you suppose that his body knew how much alcohol was in the gin he drank? If he'd only been in the habit of drinking, yeah, he might be satisfied with 2 drinks containing gin-flavored water, but if you're an alcoholic, wouldn't your body have a craving that would take 4 drinks to satisfy the need for alcohol that ought to be in 2 of them? Mildred was just pouring money down the drain. She should have saved those empty bottles and turned one bottle of full-strength gin into two bottles of the watered stuff.

Cherishing Our Stupid Ways

I'm sure we all are stupid in similar ways. We fool ourselves into thinking we're getting over on the system, when we really aren't. I was thinking about that this morning as I was bottling shampoo.

When I was in engineering school, Jeremy was in a dorm room down the hall. His mother was a hairdresser, and Jeremy shared some shampoo with me one day when I ran out. It was strange shampoo, watery, and in an odd bottle. He told me that hairdressers use thin shampoo because it penetrates the hair better. The shampoo companies add thickening agents to shampoo to make you think their shampoo is more powerful, when actually, that makes the shampoo less effective. This shampoo comes in a gallon jug only sold to hair salons, and it's diluted to make 8 gallons of shampoo.

I ended up buying a gallon of that concentrate through him, for about the price of two bottles of the high-priced stuff I had been using; it lasted me for about two years, and I was very pleased with it, but since I couldn't buy any more of the concentrate, I had to stop. Years later, I worked in the research labs of Drackett, where they developed Windex, Drano, Mr. Muscle Oven Cleaner, Vanish, endust, Behold, Renuzit, and other household cleaners.

Gary Rolled His Own

The magazines I got at work also served the personal products industry, and the various suppliers published "recipes" for various household cleaners and personal products, using their chemicals, which you could use as a starting point for developing new products. I mentioned what Jeremy had told me about shampoos to Gary, who verified every word of it. He reached into his desk and handed me a pint bottle. Here, try this shampoo, he said. You can grab the ingredients out of the supplies closet and make yourself up a gallon of concentrate; most everyone in the lab does that.

That was a nice tax-free benefit. I ended up making a dozen tubs of a detergent gel as well, years before SoftSoap hit the market, and I loved it. But a couple of years after I left Drackett, I was again without shampoo concentrate.

About a decade ago, I discovered that Sally sells to consumers. It was the first I'd seen a shop that didn't demand to see a license to buy there. Since then, I've been buying shampoo concentrate there. And then The Argument arose.

Here It Is. The Argument

Blondie didn't like the shampoo, she said. It was too runny. I tried explaining the facts to her, but this isn't the kind of argument that you win with facts. (Come to think of it, I don't think any argument between husband and wife ever is.) She wanted to use the shampoo without diluting it. "You're not saving anything by diluting it, anyway. I use a lot less of the concentrate than I use of the diluted shampoo."

And in the name of domestic tranquility, I surrendered. It's not like cost is a big factor, anyway. It was on sale last month, for $4 a gallon. That's like getting 16-ounce bottles of shampoo for 50c. You can repackage it in old shampoo bottles if you want to, but I funnel it into empty spring water bottles. There's no need to label it; the conditioner is a milky pastel color while the shampoo is a richer one.

They're also very handy to take to the dog wash. Yeah, you can turn the switch, and the water comes out with shampoo or conditioner already mixed in it, but it seems to take quite a while to flush out the one chemistry and switch to the other, and two people, each with their own bottle, can apply shampoo or conditioner much more quickly. You're on a timer, and it's expensive to wait for the water to switch!

Breaking The Habit

In any case, I was thinking about making a bottle or so of diluted shampoo for my own use. I ran out before, so I started using the concentrate from the bottle that Blondie was using, and, well, I kinda like the thick stuff. When I use the runny stuff, a lot of it runs through my fingers and lands in the bottom of the shower instead of my deriving any benefit from it.

So, Eddie is a drunkard, and I'm a wastrel. True confessions.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
dog wash - Drackett - Drano - fooling ourselves - Mephistopheles - shampoo - wastrel - watered gin - Windex - wrinkles