The Menthol Mixup

This past week menthol has been my new favorite alcohol. The amount of cough drops and vapor rub that I've used has made me a new kind of alcoholic. It's a great smell even when you're not sick, so I'm not that ashamed. (I may need to talk to my bishop about my use of alcohol. Or a dictionary. But that's the chemist in me. Anything with an -OH group is going to be an alcohol to me.)

I actually really liked the smell as a kid. Smell is said to be the sense linked strongest to memory. We've always had that menthol rub at home for when we get sick. Another menthol product that I really like is IcyHot. Now's the real story time.

Back when I was about 4 or 5, my dad used to play in a church softball league. He jokes that he didn't play that hard ("I would wait and see if the ball would hit the ground and make it out of the infield before I left the batter's box."), but he still must have had a competitive drive because he always came home super dirty and sore. He would shower and then use two products every night, almost without fail.

My mom would rub IcyHot into his sore muscles (or he would if he could reach), and he would also give his underarms a few swipes of SpeedStick. I love the smell of original Speed Stick, too. To this day it's my preferred brand and scent. To me, those smells still remind me of my dad and his athletic endeavors of his early 30's.

Well to be just like my dad (what young boy doesn't want to be like his father?), I felt I needed to put on deodorant and the muscle rub for whatever activity I had going on that day. The problem is that I didn't know which one went where at that young age. I just knew that they both went on his body and they made him smell good. I learned really quick that IcyHot with its "goes on cool, stays warm" should not go in the armpit area. Cue: burning sensation.

I think I've only ever used IcyHot once since then, possibly during my own baseball years of high school, but I never really threw the ball hard enough to warrant needing the treatment more than once. I do use SpeedStick. Somewhat regularly. I think. There's definitely a time and place for everything.