Waiting For The Burn

I wanted to share with you an experience I had in the shower last week.  Don’t worry, I will keep it PG (or maybe PG-13 depending if you mean 1990’s PG or 2014 PG criteria).

I shower in the mornings.  I feel I need to share this with you so that you understand that the event that I am about to describe occurred when I was less than 100% awake and probably only after one cup of coffee.

There is a scene in the original, 1950 version of the movie Cheaper By The Dozen (IMDB link) whereby the father (a motion studies expert) describes the fastest way to bathe.  I have a similar process for showering that I have worked on and I can normally get in and out of the shower in less than 5 minutes.  I move from one part of my body to another rather quickly and have a certain progression that goes something like this…

1. Get body wet, including hair
2. Put conditioner in hair*
3. Lather up face soap and wash face, neck and behind the ears
4. Rinse off face
5. Lather up bar soap and wash armpits, nether regions** and then feet
6. Rinse off hair and body

* I only wash my hair on Fridays so there is a different process for that day of the week
** Hopefully this is PG enough for you as I will refer to this region later on in this blog

This is my current process but a key point to this story is that step 3 used to involve using the same bar soap that I used on the rest of my body in step 5…that is until my wife brought home this bar of this soap.

Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Castile Bar Soap
https://www.drbronner.com/DBMS/BARSOAP/OBPE05.html

Initially I was excited about having some new soap as the last bar had reached what I will call “sliver” status.  It was only a bar of soap by the loosest of definitions.  What was remaining from this bar did not even have enough volume to attempt to use the Vulcan Soap Meld that we all have done from time to time when moving to a new bar of soap from an old one.  The new bar was nice and rectangular with sharper edges and it even smelled very nice (since it contained peppermint).  The peppermint, however, was ultimately my undoing.

I got into the shower with this new bar of soap and reached step 3 fast enough and had moved on to step 5.  I would estimate the start of step 3 to the start of step 5 takes about 1 minute.  As I reached the end of step 5 however, despite having rinsed off my face in step 4, my face began to tingle.  The tingle turned into another sensation (that I cannot quite find a word to describe).  It was then that I began to think that something was not right.  That nameless, second feeling then turned into a burn.

I tried, quickly, to rinse my face again but that did not help.  It was then that I began doing some math.  The tingle / burn happened about 60 seconds after I had initially washed my face.  I lost about 10 seconds testing if a re-rinsing would help so that meant that in about 50 seconds or so my nether regions would also be experiencing this same sensation.  I also resigned myself to the fact that I was powerless to stop it since rinsing the soap off appeared to have no effect.

At the same time i both wanted those 50 seconds to pass quickly and for them to pass slowly.  The only way I can compare this is to the feeling when you stub your toe and there is a brief moment when you are not feeling much pain but you know a wave of greater pain is coming.  For toe-stubbing, the “waiting for the pain” to “feeling pain” usually only takes a second or two.  In my case I almost had a minute to think about what was to come.  It felt like longer than 50 seconds though.

In the end I got through it and despite what you would think I am still using this soap for parts of my body other than my face.  With rearranging my wash / rinse process to happen for each area of my body, the pain is almost non-existent and only the tingling sensation occurs and, other than the most nether of my nether regions, it is a benign to slightly enjoyable experience.

Jon