Weird things can happen when you insist on kissing a dog

When I was kid people used to sweat. It's true. I remember seeing guys with shirts sticking to their backs at the Kresge's lunch counter back in the '60s. (Yes, I am that old, though I look about 32. Right?)

Anyway, people used to sweat, and not just the sort of people who drive fork lifts and operate air hammers. On hot August afternoons businessmen would sweat right through their seersucker suits. Sometimes, people got stinky. That's something else I remember from Kresge's lunch counter.

Nobody thought anything about it. You just held your breath until you were clear of the stinky person. It had no lasting adverse affect and built strong lungs for an entire generation.

Sure, people for the most part still bathed regularly. This is America, after all, not France. (I'm not trying to make friends with the French here.) Your choice of soap was Ivory or Kirk'sCastille, a white bar capable of melting the chrome from the bumper of your Buick in under an hour. It was the choice of real men.

Then some Madison Avenue type decided the world would be a better place if people didn't stink anymore. The Madison Avenue guy conferred with scientists and together they came up with a formula that not only prevented stinking, but cut back on sweating. Antiperspirant was born. Women, who had never been crazy about stinky men to begin with, embraced the idea.

Soon, no stinky man could get a date. Body powders, colognes, shavers with 32 blades that trim whiskers to a sub-microscopic stubble, foot powders, foot sprays, mouthwash, mouth-rinse, pre-brushing mouth rinse, pre-shave lotion, after-shave lotion, body wash, conditioner, facial masks, ear hair trimmers, nose hair trimmers, back hair trimmers, "other area" trimmers, waxing (for those for whom trimming isn't enough), and a million other "indispensable" grooming items and regimens followed.

We no longer sweat. In summer months we move from air conditioned homes to air conditioned cars to air conditioned offices. We sweat only when exercising outdoors and when we do we act like it's a Big Deal and get all self-righteous about it.

None of this really bugs me, despite my condescending tone thus far. I was sick in bed yesterday. I didn't shave, wash my hair, brush my teeth, shower. This morning I saw myself in the mirror and it wasn't pretty. Well, it's never really pretty, but the image staring back at me this a.m. was...let's just say if they ever hold auditions for The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Elephant Man, my acting career can finally get under way.

At any rate, I wouldn't want to go back to the old "deodorant optional" days.

What has me worried is a commercial I saw recently on TV. In the commercial, an attractive brunette is sitting on a sofa with her shaggy, mixed-breed dog. The woman and dog are face-to-face, nose-to-nose. In Kentucky, contact this close would be cause for a shotgun wedding.

The woman wrinkles her nose and makes a "Euuuuugghhh" sound, presumably because the dog has, well, dog-breath. The commercial goes on to suggest a new line of doggy breath mints. Apparently, there are woman who are going to kiss dogs and in order to make this more pleasurable, doggy breath mints are a must.

Can doggy deodorant be far behind? Doggy shavers? Surely smooching Rover would be more palatable if he didn't have all that face-hair, right?

Maybe I'm worried over nothing. But this feels like a slippery slope to me. Something about it, I dunno, just doesn't smell right.

Mike Taylor's book, Lookingat the Pint Half Full, is available at Amazon.com mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com and in eBook format at Barnes & Noble, Border's Books and other online book sellers. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.