Scrubbing Bubbles
Delta Winds: A Magazine of Student Essays
A Publication of San Joaquin Delta College
2008
Scrubbing Bubbles
Michael Kost
Usually (I like to think) I'm not too susceptible to the persuasive powers of modern advertising. Very rarely do I purchase a product that I have seen advertised unless I have previously made up my mind that it's something I really need. It is true that I may be persuaded to purchase one brand over another based on advertising, but to purchase something I don't need based on an ad? Doesn't happen very often.
However . . . within the last year or two a new gadget came out that I couldn't resist: the Automatic Shower Cleaner by S.C. Johnson, a Family Company. Finally. . . with this little gizmo the geniuses at S.C. Johnson developed a way to ensure the cleanliness of my shower with no more effort than the simple touch of a button! Ha-ha! So long squeegee! Be gone!
Normally I'd be somewhat skeptical of such a claim, but this . . . this employed the powers of none other than "The Scrubbing Bubbles." It had to work. Give this baby two weeks and your shower will be clean as a whistle . . . fresh as a meadow in the Swiss Alps on a spring afternoon . . . slicker than snot (oh wait, you don't want that, you'd slip and break your neck-not to mention the fact that it would be completely disgusting!). Anyway, I could hardly wait to watch the progress day by day as the grime and mildew and filth just slowly disappeared. (Okay, so my shower's not that bad, but it does have water spots and some hard water mineral deposits and probably some soap residue, but that's it!)
Well, the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into more than a month and my shower was no more sparkling clean than the day I first installed this "wonder contraption." Oh the disappointment! Oh the gut-wrenching pain and heartache of having been deceived by someone so close . . . a gigantic multi-billion dollar conglomerate over a thousand miles away that had worked so hard to earn my trust in several strategically positioned, thirty-second television commercial spots! A-go-nee, A-GO-NEE, as Daffy Duck would say. The worst part, though, was that I had to apologize to the squeegee. We're on speaking terms now, but it's just not quite the same anymore.
Oh, well. I really don't harbor any resentment over the whole debacle. I mean, seriously, how long can a person stay mad at those cute little Scrubbing Bubbles anyway? I know they did their best. Truth be told, I still have the Automatic Shower Cleaner by S.C. Johnson, a Family Company, still hanging in my shower. Guess I'm just a big softy (or is it lazy).
In retrospect, I'm not completely sure I really grasp the depth of the significance of this segment of my life's journey, nor will I be able to truly comprehend its ramifications as pertains to Freudian psychoanalytical modalities, but if someone, say, oh . . . I don't know . . . maybe my English 1D teacher, perhaps, were to hold a gun to my head and force me to compose a "statement of principle drawn from [my] empirical experience and posed as a hypothesis," I'd have to submit the following (credit P.T. Barnum): "There's a sucker born every minute!"