I emptied my gym bag a while ago so I could pack for an overnight stay at my little brother’s place. Consequently, strewn about my room are my gym shoes, swimsuit, heart rate monitor and a nut cup that I use to cover my face. Hey, if you’re running on a treadmill and you slip… sometimes it’s worth all the stares as I walk through the locker room… and the gym area… and the hot tub…
In the shower stalls at the gym, they have little soap dispensers that ooze foamy stuff into your hand that you’re supposed to rub all over your body to clean off. While I’m willing to use it under my arms, around my tushie and inside the hot tub, I’m a tad hesitant to scrub it through my hair. That’s why I went to the store a couple months ago and bought some dandruff shampoo. I don’t actually needit—people never believe me when I explain that I walk through the snow a lot all year round—but I decided that if someone else had dandruff, I could help them out. Thus, one of the other things strewn about my room is said shampoo bottle.
I’m not entirely sure how it happened, really. Maybe it was playing hide-and-seek and I walked on top of it by accident, but earlier this evening, I took a step and felt a little moist spot through my sock. I looked down, saw the shampoo bottle, then noticed that the lid had popped open and there was a little pool of shampoo drool that had soaked into the carpet… a while ago.
Thankfully, I didn’t panic. My Boy Scout training had never prepared me for such an emergency, but I knew that the first step was assess the situation: open shampoo bottle, white spot on the carpet, no dead bodies… that might explain the smell that’s been lingering in my room for the last couple weeks, but I didn’t see any… Next, I had to make the scene safe, so I grabbed the shampoo bottle and closed the top before anyone else could step on it (though it would have helped prevent dandruff if they had hair on the soles of their feet). Then it was time for FEMA to come to the rescue!
Just kidding! I wanted to get the carpet within the next year or two, so I grabbed a water bottle and filled it up, then took a t-shirt out of the dirty clothes hamper. Squiiiiiirt, scrub, scrub, scrub… Then I went back to get a second t-shirt: squiiiiiirt, scrub, scrub, scrub… Then a third: squiiiiiirt, scrub, scrub, scrub… I think I quit after shirt #5. The carpet was still damp, but at least it wasn’t foaming anymore. (In retrospect, I probably could have used my head to soak some of it up, then jumped into the shower afterwards. Also in retrospect, I’m not sure what’s in that carpet. Maybe I would have had dead-body smell in my hair, so perhaps it’s best that I stuck with the shirts.)
Now it’s just a matter of time before it dries and I see the final result. I’m hoping the shampoo rinsed out for the most part, though it leaves me with another conundrum: it’s very likely that I’ll have one patch of carpet on the floor with a great deal of shine and bounce, which will stick out dramatically next to all the matted stuff surrounding it. Should I get a couple more bottles of shampoo and some packages of t-shirts in bulk to fluff up the rest of the carpet? Should I find some massive object and drop it in the middle of the floor to cover the spot? Should I cut out that portion of the carpet and leave an exposed patch of concrete that’ll look just as matted down as the rest of the floor? Maybe I’ll go take a walk in the snow to think about it.
