More Kid Stories

Alright Gang, it's been a while since I've last written so it's going to take me a bit to get back up to speed... I thought I'd take another little trip down memory lane just to loosen up the old fingers.

Let's see, this one took place back when I was about nine, ten, or eleven. I'm not sure which but I do know I was at an odd age or at least in between. The year isn't extremely important to this story. All you need to know is that I was a kid and I loved taking showers. Still do. Whatever age I was at was probably just after the "I hate showering" phase. So, we got me at a lucky time because this story involves showering. The peculiar thing about my bathroom was that there was at least one oddity that resided in the medicine cabinet behind our mirror.

For about as long as I can remember, any time I opened up that cabinet my eyes always came to rest on an old green bottle that seemed to be completely dark and yet luminescent at the same time. As though it were some bottle of cure all full of phytoplankton. It had been there ever since we moved into the house and I'm pretty sure even before that. (Which is weird because my dad built the place.) Every time I was in the bathroom alone I'd open up the cabinet and take a look. The bottle itself was no mystery. It was only full of cologne. Manufactured by the Polo T-shirt Company.



Somehow I couldn't help but be intrigued, nay overwhelmed, by it's weird shape and color. Oftentimes, I'd open it up to take a whiff (It should be noted that I had no real concept of what cologne was for or how it was used) and imagine who would wear it and in what kind of world they lived. Paying no mind to the fact that it was actually in my world, in our medicine cabinet and I think belonged to my dad.

At some point I overheard some kids talking about cologne and it's powers. Perhaps one of my friends was explaining how it can act as an aphrodisiac. How it's "supposed to turn girls on..." Whatever. It was good enough for me. I was in. At the very next opportunity i took it out of the cabinet and took a whiff. This time all of my thoughts were on the ladies and how once I put a little Polo Cologne on my body they'd be waiting outside of 51 Sullivan Street for a chance at the young Chris Walsh...

So, I took that bottle of Cologne and put it on the sink, got undressed, and jumped into a hot shower. Periodically, opening the shower curtain just to make sure nobody'd run off with my life altering elixir. Once I was done with my shower I got out and toweled off. I took a quick look at the bottle, thinking for a second, maybe more like half a second. "If they come running if you use a little bit... what'll they do if you use more?" I said to myself. That's when I poured half the bottle of Polo Cologne all over my body. Starting with my neck I worked slowly down to my crotch, making sure not to miss my underarms and everywhere in-between. Now... I don't think the rash started right away but what it lacked in timing it more than made up for in fury. This rash was vicious.

Imagine my conundrum. A hot shower, a bottle of cologne, and giant red bumps all over my hairless bird... How do you even begin to tell anyone what happened? (Besides in a blog twenty years later?) It also raises my favorite coincidence: the solo embarrassment struggle. Where something is so embarrassing and you don't want to tell anybody and yet you have to because you're in pain. It's one of life's great comedies. Inevitably I had to tell my mom. I thought I was going to die. She took me to the doctor and I got the day off of school.

The first thing the Doctor said was, "I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS.... IN ALL MY YEARS OF DOCTORING...." He then said it "looked" like Poison Oak but wasn't quite Poison Oak. And what kind of kid runs through poison oak naked?

All of that was before I told anyone it was the old bottle of Polo Cologne in our medicine cabinet. Once he had seen it I figured that the jig was up so I let the secret go. Then the Doctor told my mom, my mom told my family, and somehow it leaked to the outside world. My class found out that the reason I had gotten out of the last week of school was because I had rubbed some old Cologne all over my genitals... they were unhappy BUT the ladies still haven't left me alone.

-Chris