Grandparents Bathroom Cabinet...

     I was thinking the other day what fun it was when my sister and I were kids to stay over at our Grandparents place. It wasn't fancy, just a one bedroom apartment but it may as well have been the Waldorf. We could stay up late watching crappy horror movies, eating homemade popcorn swimming in melted butter (not us, the popcorn) and the chocolate bars we had bought earlier in the day (also those cinnamon flavored toothpicks that I fried the corners of my mouth with). We could do whatever we want, have whatever we wanted for dinner (usually macaroni and cheese) and breakfast was almost always homemade pancakes and bacon. One time Grandma had run out of maple syrup and improvised my melting some brown sugar in a little hot water-- I thought it was magic.

   There was one thing I found a little a little weird though (besides the fact that they both snored like you wouldn't believe) and that was the contents of the cupboard underneath the bathroom sink. A selection of creams, balms, lotions and potions that I supposed people needed to use as they got older but wasn't really sure what for.  Names like Anusol, Preparation "H", Lanacane and Tucks Pads were staples. I remember these silver wrapped suppositories that looked like Hershey's Kisses, slimmer and without little label on the top, I never ate one but did try a square of Ex-Lax once-- who wouldn't? Looks like chocolate, tastes like chocolate but brother it ain't chocolate.

    There was always a bottle of Dettol, a container of Nivea Creme (which I still use today), Oil of Olay, Vicks Vapo-Rub, Vasoline Petroleum Jelly, Gold Bond Powder, Aqua-Velva, Old Spice, Penaten Creme, Polysporin and the cabinet smelled of a combination of all of the above. 

    They also possessed a container of strange surgical tools. Varying sizes of scissors (some curved), nail clippers and files, razors and those things that you use to curl your eyelashes which I had absolutely no idea what they were used for at the time. I remember having a bit of fun with the round, two-sided magnifying mirror (they probably used it for checking the back end).

    Anyhoo, after one of these sleepovers we would come home out of our minds from all the freedom and Mom would invariably say, "If this is how you're going to behave after staying there, you're not going to any more." But we always did cause the folks needed to go out on the town as much as we did-- but I never forgot that cabinet, it's aroma and the mysteries (or maybe miseries) within. And as I get older, I'm starting to collect a few of those products for myself.