Mr. Bubble Broke My Other Heart

I don't like baths. I never have. And not a dislike when little kids fight their parents on having to take a bath to get clean after a long day of, well, being a kid. A fundamental core belief that baths are a form of torture forced upon children.

Even as a youth I didn't fully understand the concept of a bath. You want me to immerse myself in a tub full of water that's slowly turning opaque because of...my filth? And then I'm clean at the end, even though I've been sitting in that filthy water with just a little soap scrubbed on me...? Or am I clean because after I stand up you're dumping more water on me to wash off the water that I was just in...? That adult logic just did not make sense to me. 

So I struggled with the actual cleanliness level of a bath. But baths also represent to me one other thing: an itchy vagina. I could tolerate baths as a kid if my mom threw in a little bubbly into the tub. (The soapy kind of bubbly, although I probably would have been more mellow child had my mom plied me with champagne or moscato.) Growing up in a small Iowa town, our store-purchased bubble bath options were limited to a pink bottle of soapy suds named Mr. Bubble. Being cursed with freckles and pale, sensitive skin, it meant a trial and error of what my skin could and could not tolerate. Baby powder? Nope. Direct sun? Absolutely not. Snuggle Bear and her fabric softener? Hell no. And apparently, one of those elements in life that my skin rejected was Mr. Bubble: the first mister in my life to make my skin itch and crawl, but definitely not the last. I'm not sure what exactly about Mr. Bubbles' formula that caused my thighs, vagina, and lower leg parts to feel like a million little ants were crawling across them, but it was painful and uncomfortable. Eventually, after a trip to the doctor's
office, my mother came to realize that it was Mr. Bubble causing me the discomfort. Without the solace of bubbles in my water, I protested baths and soon became a five-year-old who refused baths and only showered.

I heard about the company that owned Mr. Bubble filing for bankruptcy way back in 2005, and remembered being relieved that I wouldn't have to worry about stumbling across Mr. Bubble's stupid pink face again. But they continued to market Mr. Bubble and, 62 years later, you can still purchase Mr. Bubble and his itchy vagina suds on Amazon. If Mr. Bubble was on a dating app, I could not swipe left fast enough on him, and I absolutely would report him.