Mentirosa

How long has it been, reader?

I was having a conversation in undergrad with some people (while watching an awful vh1 reality show) and somehow the topic of showering came up. An acquaintance of mine expressed her revulsion that someone on television had gone a day without showering.  She found it absolutely repulsive that anyone could skip a day and promptly informed us that, “I have never gone a day without showering in my LIFE!!  I just…can’t do that.  I don’t see how someone could DO that. Ugh.” [shudders]. And then she kept going on and on about how utterly inexcusable such a transgression would be; how disgusting.

I tend to hold my tongue most of the time anyway, especially with non-friends, so I kept my mouth shut.  But in my mind, I surmised that she was either:

A)    A liar (hence the title of this blog post), or

B)    You live a sad life, or

C)    You're a sufferer of OCD

This sounds harsh, no?  I know.  But this blog is the only place where I can be an asshole.  Let me explain, though, and perhaps you won’t think as poorly of me.

A: If you say you’ve never, ever gone a day without bathing, I don’t believe you. I just...don't.  It’s not like I am proud of the fact that I have skipped a day before, and I don’t bring this up in conversation of course (“Omg did you watch Boardwalk Empire last night?  By the way, I haven’t washed my ass in 24 hours”).  But at the same time, I can be honest about it.   I don’t think she was being truthful.   I'm not even talking about having skipped a day in childhood either. I'm quite certain that most people have skipped since they have reached adulthood. 

B: If she had never gone a day in her 21 years (this was in undergrad, I remind you; we're older now) without taking a shower, then she probably had no life.  Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with having been clean all 7,665 (not accounting for leap years!) days of your life, but if that’s the case then you probably never got shitfaced with your friends; so inebriated that you had the worst hangover the next morning and could barely make it to the porcelain throne to vomit, much less shower.  It means you probably never partied so hard that you spent the entire day after sleeping because you were utterly exhausted.  It means you’ve always had time on your hands, and have never been so busy being out there making things happen that you just didn’t have time to shower.  It probably means you’ve never taken a day all to yourself to spend in your pajamas watching the Say Yes to the Dress marathon  television and eating your feelings.  It means you’re probably not in a serious relationship and have never spent the day in bed with the one you love.  In other words, if you’ve managed to shower EVERY day, then I feel sorry for you.

C.  It’s possible that she is just obsessed with cleanliness and has OCD.  If this is the case, then I believe her.  Either way, I feel sorry for her.  She's either duplicitous, or she didn't make the most of the university experience, or she has an anxiety disorder listed in the DSM-IV.