What's the world coming to? It's getting hard to tell the liquid soap from the liquid hand cream from the liquid vitamin supplements.
Every day, it seems like we are living in an increasingly liquid world. I'm not preaching against the evils of alcohol or for a new era of prohibition that will save us from sin and politicians. After all, water is also a liquid, and it rarely inflicts us with either sin or politicians.
But we do expect everything to be excruciatingly easy these days, so liquid is the operating system of choice.
No time to eat? Grab a liquid breakfast and run. Why tie a knot in the umbilical chord connecting your bed to your desk? If you can find a long enough straw, just start slurping as you rise from bed, and smack your lips to the last drop as you whiz out the front door. Bye.
Remember when soap came in bars? Solid bars? Sorry, I guess I'm showing my age. Now everybody uses liquid soap. Yesterday I reached for the soap. No, wait. I reached for the hand cream. Or was it the soap? But what if it is the hand cream? Soap or hand cream? Which is which?
People used to nail siding onto the exterior of their homes. Now they just spray on "liquid siding". It comes in three tasty flavors: siding, ceramic and stucco. Yum.
And now they've taken my little vitamin supplement pills and liquefied them, too.
"Hold on just a minute. How do you know they liquefied the vitamin pills?"
Who said that?
"Are vitamins naturally solid? Or are they naturally liquid?"
Uh. I had to admit that I probably would not recognize a vitamin if I bumped into it in the street ... in which case I have a hunch it might be too big to swallow. Say, who is this?
"Where do you think vitamins come from, anyway?"
I always assumed they came from the back of the corner store in a small town in Indiana, but upon reflection, I suspect they might come from oranges and fish and milk. Who are you?
"Don't you think it's pretty hard to stuff a fish into a hard, little pill?"
I suppose The Voice has a point.
"You drink milk, don't you?"
Yeah, but that's because it's liquid. Suddenly I recalled my dream from just last week. Cow after cow heading into a factory on a conveyor belt. At first I though it was the Annual Bovine Family Reunion, but on the other side of the factory, riding the same conveyor belt, were neatly sealed cartons of milk. Aaargh!
"Squeezed. Like an orange. You drink juice, don't you?"
Yeah...but squeezing a cow?
"Just what do you know about liquid?"
I thought real hard. Everything comes in one of three states: gas, liquid and solid. Gas is like the politicians when they are talking. Liquid is like the politicians when they are hard at work attending cocktail receptions. Solid is like statues of politicians (They look so peaceful!).
Everything comes in either gas, liquid or solid. That is about all I could remember of my high school chemistry. That, and how to explode a partially dissected frog. No, wait. That wasn't chemistry class. Silly me. Why would we have a partially dissected frog in chemistry class. That was that other class. What was it called, again? Oh yes, "home economics".
"Did the frog contain vitamins?"
Not any more.
"Do you think it's easier to pack vitamins into a tiny, hard pill or into a drink?"
I suppose it all depends on what kind of explosive you use. I tried to imagine squeezing a fish into a carton. But fish walking up a conveyor belt seemed just a bit radical ... and even less tasty than freshly squeezed cow.
"Liquid vitamin supplements are made only from plant ingredients."
That's it. Keep your cow. Keep your fish. Keep your frog...what's left of it. I'm going to for a pure liquid life.
My only question now is: Which one is the soap, and which one is the hand cream? And which one is my liquid vitamin supplement? I don't want to drink the soap by mistake.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Leonhardt is author of one of the
best self-help books on happiness and owner of a
liquid vitamins website, including several
articles on nutrition.
