Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Suave and Death

As far as shampoo goes, I usually buy knock-off brands or Suave, which is basically a branded knock-off brand. (As an aside, it bothers me that Suave now has commercials, because I imagine they hiked the price a couple cents without my noticing for their new marketing campaign.) A couple months ago I was browsing the hair care aisle and I decided, against all of my childhood training, to treat myself with a pricey salon brand. I would use it only once a week, I decided. I chose Mondays, because it feels nice to start the week off clean and pretty. Suave and I would maintain our routine the other six days.

So every Monday around 6:00 am, I would rub approximately 25 cents worth of shampoo into my scalp, which really is a lot if you think about the people living for less than a dollar a day. And since I stayed faithful to my rationing schedule, the bottle seemed to last a long, long time. The line of liquid didn't seem to be diminishing at all. In fact, I started to think that it was like the endless bottle of oil that Elijah gave the widow; in a way I actually accepted this could be true.

But a couple weeks ago I noticed that the bottle was getting lighter. And then very suddenly, it was empty. I shook the bottle upside down and bewilderedly poured the last bit of expensive-smelling potion onto my palm. It was as I tossed the empty bottle onto the bathmat that I came to a new conclusion within myself:

Someday, I am going to die.

The eternal bottle of oil is my soul; as it says in Psalms, eternity is written on my heart. But on this earth, my Mondays are numbered just as finitely as my shampoo.

4 comments:

Samantha F. said...

You are criminal in ways that ordinary criminals could never aspire to. You lead us down one path and then - BLAMMO! You run us down with the turquoise Hummer that is your convoluted, insane, hilarious, and yet entirely relatable reasoning. We're left dazed, slightly outraged, amazed, and still laughing.

Samantha F. said...

I love you Joy. God was in a very good mood when He created you!

Joy said...

Well I'd hate to be on the end of a BAD review from you, although I would love to read one of your bad reviews of someone else.

Here is a quote from a review that I read... it was an elite British magazine reviewing 50 Cent's album.

"Here we have someone not so much off their game, but rather sulking in a different stadium on the other side of the world."

Brilliant!

Samantha F. said...

HA! Gotta love those Brits. So witty, so dry - *sigh*