Seedy things are happening in the shower

The soap in our house is beginning to frighten me.

Somehow, we have accumulated a collection of boutique soaps with ingredients that, frankly, should never be rubbed over one’s body.

Take, for instance, poppy seeds.

This morning in the shower I used a Lemon With Poppy Seed Massage Bar that came from Belgium by way of England by way of some friends who brought it back from vacation.

The lemon, I could deal with. After years of living in a family consisting of 50 percent women, I have become reconciled to using bath products that closely resemble the ingredients of Fruit Compote. One year, I went through a period of washing my hair with a shampoo that had the exact consistency, texture and aroma of Melon-Ball Salad Dressing.

Heck, I routinely wash my hands in Warm Vanilla Sugar Scrub, which is why I smell somewhat like a Baskin-Robbins crossed with a Reno massage parlor. (I’ve smelled worse, and I mean that in both senses.)

But these poppy seeds – I just don’t know whether they have any place in the bathtub. Without getting too explicit, let me just say that I ended up with poppy seeds in anatomical regions that should never be decorated with any kind of muffin ingredient. Let me also say that if I flunk a drug test this week, it’s not because I’ve been smoking opium.

Doctor: Jim, we just received a disturbing finding from the lab. You have a low level of opiates in your bloodstream.

Me: Oh. Yeah. I can explain that. Poppy seeds.

Doctor: You mean you’ve been eating poppy seeds?

Me: Not exactly. I think I may have … assimilated some. You know. Internally.

Doctor: You mean, you injected an opiate?

Me: (laughing blithely) No, no. I mean I think I have absorbed some poppy through, what do you call it, osmosis.

Doctor: I don’t understand …

Me: Look. Here’s a poppy seed in my armpit.

Yet at least poppy seeds aren’t as painful as the ingredient in another bar of soap I’ve been using. Some friends of ours went to Scotland and returned with something called Scottish Oatmeal Soap. Through the first couple of showers, I thought this was a fine idea for a soap. It was creamy and rich, like good Scottish oatmeal. But as the bar began to wear down, rough husks of raw oats begin to emerge from the surface. Jagged shards of chaff were sticking out like spikes.

At this point, soaping up with Scottish Oatmeal Soap is akin to rubbing coarse-grit sandpaper over one’s torso. You might as well call it Scottish Oatmeal Scourge.

“That’s exactly what it’s supposed to do,” my wife informed me. “It’s an exfoliant.”

“Yeah, well, so is Agent Orange,” I replied. “You don’t see me rubbing THAT all over my body.”

Actually Agent Orange is a defoliant. An exfoliant is something that removes dead skin cells from the body. Apparently if you scrub yourself hard enough with oatmeal, you’ll eventually scrub all the way down to a newer, fresher hide. If you were a lobster, they’d call it molting.

As it turns out, poppy seeds are an exfoliating agent as well. On the tin of my Lemon With Poppy Seed Massage Bar it says, “The poppy seeds dislodge dead skin flakes and surface dirt gently.”

In digging through our bathroom cabinet, I discovered that poppy seeds are commonly used for this task. I found another bar called Poppy Seed and Anise Soap, which, when used liberally, will not only exfoliate you but cause you to smell like a double-shot of Jagermeister.

Well, fine. But I’m still baffled about the poppy seeds. Why use poppy seeds for this task when any number of other ingredients can exfoliate the heck out of you just as well? Pepper grindings? Quick-cooking grits? Bark? Twigs? Road gravel?

I’ll take basalt chips over oatmeal, at least.

Maybe poppy seeds aren’t so bad after all. Maybe something intrinsic in poppy seeds makes them superior. Their perfect roundness, their tiny BB-like perfection, makes them especially suited to dislodging dead skin flakes. I can’t think of any other seed that would work as well in the shower. Let me put it this way: Nobody wants sesame seed buns.

So I am beginning to accept the entire poppy seed concept. In fact, I plan to go the supermarket and pick up some day-old Kaiser rolls. I’ll use them for loofah.