A long time ago my mother found an encyclopedia in the bathroom. She asked my father if he was doing “some light reading” while using the facilities. He told her he didn’t know anything about it, so she decided to ask me, and what she found out surprised her very much.
It was I who’d been reading the encyclopedia in the bathroom . . . and I was 6.
I don’t know about you, but the bathroom is just plain boring. Sitting there, hanging out with nothing to do (and rarely something to look at) wears at my productive/efficient side. I feel the same way about working out. I hate going to gyms because it’s so mindless. P.S. That’s why I study the martial arts; you have to think to survive, you lose weight while building muscle, and you get to beat people up!
Anyway, so I found a way around being bored in the bathroom . . . just pick up a good book. Ever since I was six I’ve read tons of things on the porcelain throne; everything from magazines to encyclopedias to novels (no, I didn’t read the entire novel in one sitting). In fact, I’ve read the entire collected works of Shakespeare . . . in the bathroom. I was in college, I was really busy with school and work, but I wanted to read Shakespeare too, so I found the most opportune time. There’s nothing wrong with a little Bard in the Bathroom!
Anyway, since I’ve been reading in the bathroom my ENTIRE life, I’ve formed quite a habit. It’s hard to have a seat and not immediately reach for the nearest copy of Writer’s Digest or the next volume of Calvin and Hobbes. This does present a problem, though, when using bathrooms that are not my own. Many times you get lucky and the owner of the aforementioned water closet has their own reading material close at hand, but from time to desperate-time you find yourself in a public stall or in the lavatory of someone who’s illiterate.
This is what I do: if it’s a public bathroom you can use your iPod or cell phone to play games. You can also peruse the stall walls and bulk up on your ghetto slang and pithy perversions. But if you’re visiting relatives with no reading material you have to stoop pretty low. And boy do I ever.
I’ve read the backs of almost every shampoo bottle, can of hair spray, toothpaste tube, bathroom cleaner, and tissue box ever made. I can tell you how much fluoride Colgate has in it compared to Close Up. Did you know that tampons . . . ? Well, never mind.
Like I said, I get bored.
So I’m in my Aunt’s bathroom trying very hard to not give in to my Obsessive Bathroom Reading Behavior (OBRB). I fail miserably. So after reading her hairspray and toothpaste I move on to the contents of her shower, and it’s there that I stumbled upon a very annoying advertising tactic.
You knew I’d get to the point eventually.
I pick up a bottle of shampoo and find an interesting question on the back. Q: What percentage of women wear the wrong bra size? I must admit the question intrigued me. I casually scanned the bottle for the answer but, to my dismay, I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t there. Instead of the answer I desperately wanted to know there were written very little words that read, “to find out the answer look on the back of our Conditioner.”
I couldn’t believe it! What kind of a pathetic ploy was that. The only way you can know the answer is to purchase the shampoo andthe conditioner together? Granted, I was in a very vulnerable state at the time: I was in a frilly bathroom with no reading material and I’d just been hoodwinked by a shampoo company’s marketing department.
Needless to say I scoured her shower in hopes of finding the conditioner bottle, but apparently the answer hadn’t been important to my Aunt. When I looked at the shampoo bottle again I did find an answer there, but it was obviously the answer to the question on the back of the conditioner tube! Grrr.
So, in the end, I finished my bathroom session highly annoyed. First of all, my Aunt seriously needs a magazine rack or library shelf in her bathroom (preferably with books listed using the Dewey Decimal System). Second of all, that shampoo company needs to get a life. If that’s the best you can do to get people to buy your conditioner I think you need to have a better product.
So just to spite the Big Bad Shampoo ExecsI’m not only NOT going to buy the shampoo or the conditioner, I’m also not even going to look at the bottle as I walk past it in Wal-Mart. Hmph. So there. That’s what they get for taking advantage of me in a compromising situation.
So, in retrospect, all I have to ask is, does anyone know “what percentage of women wear the wrong size bra?”
Posted by Kevin Olsen 
