Oceans of Lotion

I ONCE knew a woman who relieved the tedium of dishwashing by memorizing long stretches out of Racine or Moliere, Glancing up now and then at the book perched above the sink, she would declaim such sonorous Alexandrines as these: —

All-power of the bearded ones, indeed! Why, even her selection of such a passage indicated an inappropriate humility. Had she never heard that she was the purchaser of four fifths of the world’s goods? I am not so modest. A sort of silent adviser to the Big Business Man, I compose letters which I never get around to writing.

‘Dear Sir,’ I say, chasing a fugitive scrap of oatmeal around the bottom of a pan with a copper-mesh ball about as big and as flexible as a grapefruit, ‘In your laudable desire to improve your Kitchen Bright Ball, I think you have forgotten that the function of a scouring pad is to get into corners.’

I picture the Great Man in his glittering executive offices. Remote, gray-haired, and kindly, he does not think me negligible; he wants me to be happy about my scouring pads. When he assumes, somewhat fallaciously, that because I like his Kitchen Bright Ball I might like it bigger, he should be told differently. He needs someone with the homely domestic touch — someone like me, in short — to write him letters.

Sometimes I even take a hand in more public affairs. In my correspondence there is some pretty sage advice to the manager of my favorite department store. Leaving others to make obvious complaints about seams that split, I urge him to see to it that children’s letter paper is made large enough for them to write on. And why, when children’s noses are so regrettably active, should their handkerchiefs be so very small? Portraits of Mickey Mouse on one’s handkerchief, however engaging (I shall tell him), never really compensate for inadequate yardage.

And I have plenty to say on the subject of moving stairways. ‘ Dear Sir,’ that one will begin, ‘I view with alarm your plan to supplant your main bank of elevators with escalators.’

He may wonder why I prefer one form of mechanism to another. I think that it is the potentialities, not of danger, but of ignominy, that I have always suspected. My children, who are devoted to the escalators, may ride them freely — as long as I need not go along. On our rare shopping trips together it is my practice, before I dart to the elevators to join them on another floor, to kiss the children good-bye and wave them off on their little excursion. Watching thus, I have seen some curious sights. As one given to dropping keys and handbags, I do well to keep off the moving stairways. I cannot forget the agitated girl struggling to retrieve a five-dollar bill before it got mashed at the bottom; or the gentleman whose umbrella caught and got wedged upright. They stopped the machinery that time, but before they could extricate the umbrella the embarrassed gentleman had fled. I dare say he rides the elevators now, like me.

It is in the kitchen, however, that I have the largest opportunities for my stillborn correspondence. You might think my Big Executive’s wife would point out a few obvious facts to him. I suppose she seldom gets out to the kitchen, except to toss up a dish of scrambled eggs on Thursday; and her cook, poor patient creature, is even less articulate than I.

Yet, without my intervention, reform sometimes penetrates the kitchen. One manufacturer, divining my silent apostrophe, finally got around to putting up his vanilla in squatty, non-tippable bottles. I wish I could report that his brand now outsells all others.

I like to make up letters to the people who put recipes on packages. Whenever I want to make a cornstarch pudding — the intervals are long, for I am not very fond of what our English cousins call ‘cold shapes’ — I try the package recipe first. It seems odd that the cornstarch merchant should suggest an insufficient amount of cornstarch. I rebuke him pretty severely. It is the conclusion of that letter that I am fondest of; it should give him pause. ‘Dear Sir,’ I say, ‘In our family we have decided that fresh fruits and cheese make a much more sophisticated dessert.’

I address warm letters of appreciation to the manufacturer of pots and pans. It is jolly of him to streamline my cooking utensils; but how about guaranteeing a saucepan that will not tip over with a little pressure on the handle? And how about making me a wide, shallow baking pan with a cover to fit, so that I can have lots of surface for browning when the top is off? I am tired of trying to make a cookie sheet do for a cover. And speaking of lids — I hope I am decently grateful to all the designers who have enlivened grocery packages with ingenious pouring spouts and sifters. But while you are about your improvements, dear Sir, may we not have an end to those unpleasant little oval caps which, turned sideways, are always falling in and being drowned in cocoa and baking powder?

I am never severe for long with my Big Business Man. I know that, for all his concern with my kitchen conveniences, he still thinks of me as a Lovely Lady. He wants me to be alluring. He wants me to keep, in addition to the bottle of hand lotion in the bathroom, another one on the kitchen shelf. And so I will, if he does n’t make it too hard to get at the stuff. There are bottles that fasten on the wall, bottles with patent plunger caps, and bottles with openings as small as the eye of a needle — all calculated to release not more than two drops at a time.

‘Dear Sir: I don’t know what you are thinking of with your two drops of lotion. You had better read what Rosalind said to Silvius about Phebe. Rather catty of her, too, to drop ideas like that into his head, when he was going to have to put up with his rustic love for the rest of their lives.

‘Why, if Shakespeare was right, dear Sir, we’ll take Oceans of Lotion. And there’s a slogan for you.’