CityView Magazine

8 March 2022 Mary Zahran, who thinks maybe the UPS driver is the one person she should apologize to, can be reached at maryzahran@gmail.com. more than misshapen bars floating in pools of slimy water on bathroom counter tops. In the early days of my soap obsession, I had to go to the mall to buy what I wanted. It was the golden age of malls, when stores created elaborate window displays and offered exceptional merchandise and customer service. e simple act of shopping for soap turned into an hours-long excursion to shops I planned to patronize and others I discovered by accident. Aer I had purchased my bottles of soap, I would walk to Waldenbooks and glance through racks of magazines and books. Sometimes I would go to Belk and have lunch in their upstairs cafe. Occasionally, I brought my daughters with me, and we almost always went to Baskin-Robbins to get ice cream. Eventually, I began to expand the boundaries of my original soap world. No longer content to purchase only bottles of lemon kitchen soap, I decided to go with a more whole-house approach. How could I pay so much attention to my kitchen while ignoring my bathrooms and laundry room? With these additional spaces, I had a chance to let my soap genius shine. I went all out, carefully choosing scents based on seasons and holidays. I considered it an act of heresy to have pumpkin-scented soap in the bathroom in July, just as it was unthinkable to have melon and cucumber soap in the laundry room in December. No self-respecting soap aficionado would ever engage in such deviant behavior. Sadly, I realized I was in over my head. As luck would have it, one of my daughters made an oand remark that caught my attention. I had just received a large shipment of soap and was checking to make sure everything was in order. My daughter, gazing at a table covered with bottles of various scents, jokingly suggested that I needed to go to "soap rehab." I now find myself exercising a bit more self-control in my online viewing and shopping these days. I no longer rush to order soap whenever it goes on sale, and I try not to purchase so many bottles at one time that the UPS delivery person might suffer an injury while climbing the steps to my front door. However, I still shudder at the thought of using pumpkin-scented soap during the dog days of summer — some things are just wrong and will always be wrong. M y addiction to soap began innocently enough about 30 years ago when I purchased a bottle of kitchen lemon hand soap guaranteed to help me wash away any unpleasant odors. Since I spent a great deal of time chopping onions and garlic and was never able to get rid of these smells no matter how hard I scrubbed my skin, I decided to give this product a try. To my amazement, it worked. Little did I know that this single purchase would lead to a life of perpetual soap abuse, complete with innumerable visits from UPS drivers who would routinely drop countless boxes of soap on my doorstep. It is easy to fall prey to the promise of a world filled with beautifully decorated dispensers that enable you to squirt just the right amount of soap into your hands. Especially when you grow up in a world that offers you nothing but harsh soaps that clean your skin but smell almost as bad as the odors you are attempting to wash away. And when your entire soap landscape consists of little SOMEDAY YOU'LL THANK ME Coming clean: True confessions of a soap addict BY MARY ZAHRAN It is easy to fall prey to the promise of a world filled with beautifully decorated dispensers that enable you to squirt just the right amount of soap into your hands. FDIC INSURED All we see is you , NOW TRUIST

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