Deodorant

Tim and I buy the same brand/kind of deodorant: Old Spice Fresh Sport. (No, this blog with zero readership is not sponsored by Procter & Gamble.) We each packed our deodorant when we went to Denver, but at some point during the trip, someone’s deodorant went missing. Strange, but also possible that someone thought they packed theirs and did not, so we waited to see if one was waiting for us at home. It wasn’t. One is gone! We had a brief conversation about it, but it is SO low priority compared to everything else going on in our lives right now (jail! death! summer camps!) that we quickly moved on. We did not buy a second deodorant. We did not discuss the fact that there are two people using one deodorant. We simply started sharing.

Is this gross? Have we crossed a line? Our marriage, now ten years in, feels like a web of important but totally arbitrary lines we have drawn. Share a toothbrush? Only in extreme emergencies. We close the bathroom door to relieve ourselves, unless I just had a baby and inevitably exposed everything to everyone, in which case there is no need to be falsely modest for a month or two, when we will return to the status quo of door closed. Sharing the shower is fine, but if Tim sleeps in just a t-shirt, he looks so naked that I feel I have to cover him up. We share water bottles on a day trip, but not water glasses at home.

We have now been sharing deodorant for about three weeks. In that time, we have made multiple trips to the grocery store and drug store, which tells me that this is an issue neither of us cares about. A non-issue. But if I can predict how this ends, Tim will go to the drug store in a few days to buy sleep diapers for the three-year-old, and will come home with a new deodorant for himself. Stay tuned. (Just kidding- there will be no follow-up story. No one needed to read about this in the first place.)