Noogle; it’s a thing.
For those of you who shower on the regular, this is a warning. Towel off your fingers before you use your phone in or near the shower.
Recently, I learned to Noogle—Nude-Googling, Noogling, in verb form.
Noogling is alive and well in the Cotton Compound. Here’s how it went down.
I was shopping for new shampoo at Walmart. Never before this year have I been concerned about the price of soapy products. I would grab items on my list—a list mostly scribbled in my head—add them to the cart, and move along. I’m ashamed to admit that I wasn’t comparing the cost of one against the other. It’s a shameful and wasteful way to shop. I apologize.
I always keep a dandruff shampoo around the house, mainly because in past years I would get a dry scalp about mid-winter. Head and Shoulders would always fix it.
Two years ago, I purchased my last bottle. Retirement eliminated my dry scalp. Add that to the list of benefits of leaving police work for whatever I do now. I’m not even sure I know what it is; at least there’s no job description, but it doesn’t cause dandruff.
I digress.
Well, I noticed the bottle of blue shampoo, shower-side, was nearly empty, and, trying to avert disaster with winter approaching, I swung my grocery cart down the soap and shampoo aisle to grab another. The price difference between the name-brand and the store-brand was shocking. I tossed the cheaper version into the rolling steel basket of indebtedness.
Knowing also that the squeeze bottle of body wash was getting to the point that I’d be squirting hot water through the top to make it last three or four more scrubbings, I perused the shelves for a bit of that.
Pre-retirement (and during my dandruff phase), I bought, from eye level shelving, interestingly enough, the best-smelling stuff —or so I thought.
I went with the standard red bottle (brand name withheld unless they decide to pay me for endorsements, or get me a big white horse to ride around on shirtless —look away; it would be hideous), but I looked at the price. Wow!
Two shelves below sat a blue bottle of something that purported to smell like sandalwood, and four bucks cheaper for the same amount. Not knowing what sandalwood would smell like without shampoo and body wash, I picked it up, sniffing around the cap in case the seal was weak.
I smelled nothing but plastic and a little bit of generic Polo, either worn by the clerk who placed it there or by another guy who was value shopping. He probably doesn’t have dandruff either. But I don’t know that.
It was then that I spotted the bottle of 3-in-1 hair, body, and face wash. I didn’t sniff the bottle to ascertain if it smelled like citrus and musk, but I know I wouldn’t be able to tell you if it was musk or mushroom, citrus or sour cherry; I only knew that 3-in-1 means savings.
Truthfully, it’s only 2-in-1 because I’ve never used a singular face-washing concoction before, figuring out early on that my face is part of my body, and saving that money for toothpaste. I look at it as a bonus body part, but Suave sees it as a heck of a selling point.
And I never smelled the contents of the bottle until I needed to figure out how to open it without breaking the pump mechanism.
This is where it gets weird.
Gloriously showering, quite delighted with myself for replacing three things (two, really) with one bottle of something-or-other, I gleefully manipulated the little pump in all directions but the correct one.
I couldn’t get it to open. I’ve broken these devices before, so I’ve relegated myself to keeping them upright in the shower, spilling some into my hand when needed as they stand there, capless. I wanted my relationship with the new bottle to be better than anything that came before it. There would be no savings if I spilled it.
I yelled out the door of the shower after ham-handedly handling the bottle for about three minutes.
Luckily, I thought, the S.O. was home, but probably in a Zoom meeting about forty feet and three doorways away from my future soapy scrubbing.
I yelled out, “Honey, I need help. I can’t open the pump bottle.”
There was no answer. Whether ignoring me for what she feared to see, or because of significant events on the screen before her, she didn’t respond.
Knowing better than to slip and slide my way toward her meeting, and her imminent job loss for having a naked guy show up in the background holding a bottle of discount 3-in-1 bodywash within his paws, I grabbed my phone from the counter. I need her employed for insurance purposes, after all.
A slip-and-fall would be so much worse without full coverage.
For the record, this is when the Noogling occurred. The phone screen lit up, but my wet fingers didn’t give me the traction I needed to delve into the idiosyncrasies of unseating the pump from its secure perch, sucked down tightly to the bottle of 3-in-1 citrus/musk.
I finally dried my hands on a towel, delved deeply into YouTube, and found hundreds of tutorials on unseating the pumps on squirt bottles containing this and that. Shivering, I watched only one. But it was enough.
With that many videos being made and disseminated, it seems that my new friends at Suave might, in the future, find some open space on the back of their bottles for a pictorial review of pump retrieval. There are directions on most everything. Sure, it would be too small to see, but that’s probably because it’s cold outside the shower.
I digress.
The key is that the cap securing the pump to the bottle must be tightly closed, even to the point that it would be enough to keep your mother’s July green beans safe from botulism in the glass quart Ball jars for up to 3.5 years post-canning. Yes. That tight.
I followed the directions, turning the pump in the opposite direction, and it popped up.
I only found that pertinent information out during the Noogling (nude Google) session. Dripping on the floor —the amount of water that cascades through the overflow tubes at the Hoover Dam during a powerful late-spring rainstorm.
The musk and citrus have a pleasant fragrance, married together by the shampoo scientists at Sauve, and I have since used the perfumed soap on my body, face, and hair with no ill effects.
The dandruff has not returned, but if it does, you can be sure I will be happy I purchased the screw-capped version of the discount Equate. I’m all in for saving, but I’ve learned a valuable lesson about pump-tops.
Go ahead, Noogle it. Make sure you pull your curtains together, too. My neighbors are birch trees; yours may be human.
That’s all I’ve got.
From the Jagged Edge of America, and smelling of musk and citrus, I remain,
TC
Thanks to all of you who buy the books, read the posts, and join me in support thought the BuyMeACoffee App. You are appreciated. You can also subscribe through Facebook if that floats your boat. Thank you. tc