Lori Duff Writes

Back in the 1970s there was a commercial for Faberge Organic Shampoo[1] that had some All-American looking blonde girl telling two friends about how awesome her shampoo was, and they each told two friends and so on and so on until the whole thing went viral before going viral was a thing.

It’s worth re-watching that commercial now that going viral has a completely different meaning.  It was a pretty effective ad with a pretty effective message, considering I remember it forty years later.  If you only affect two people, but each of your two people affect two people, and so on, within a thirty-second commercial, you’ve got a lot of people with clean hair. 

So here we are in Coronapocalypse 2020, wondering if all this social isolation is worth it.  It’s also made me realize how many people I am in touch with, even when I’m trying not to touch people.  I touch my mail, which my letter carrier has touched.  When I open my packages from Amazon, the poor over-worked, underpaid warehouse worker has touched my gottahaveit Corona Virus Survival Kit martini glasses. 

When I get gas for my car, how many people have touched the pump?  How many people have touched the keypad for the credit card doohickey?  When I buy apples at the grocery store, how many people touched my apples before picking out their own?  I mean, sure I can wash my apples before eating them, but in the meantime, I have touched the apples.  And my face, because, apparently, I am incapable of not touching my face.   

I am lucky enough to live on some acreage where herds of deer roam and a fairly robust stream rumbles through.  There are plenty of trees and squirrels for my dog to bark at.  If it came to it, I could boil water and shoot food[2].  No matter how bad things get, if my little family can stay virus-free we’ll probably survive it.  My husband’s annoying habit of buying eight of every box and can that is on a buy-one-get-one-free sale at Publix and storing it in the basement ‘just in case’ now looks like foresight. 

With any luck, all this social isolation will seem, in hindsight, like over-reaction.  If it does, it will mean that we did the right thing.  It will mean that even thought the first shiny blonde shampoo-pusher told two friends, maybe one or both of those two decided to keep the shampoo secret to herself.  And so on and so on and so on. 

If you enjoyed this and want to read more like it, visit Lori on Twitter or on Facebook or read her award winning books.  Her new book, “If You Did What I Asked In The First Place” is currently available by clicking here.

[1] With pure wheat germ oil and honey!

[2] OK, I personally could not shoot my food.  Not just because I am a weenie about shooting something that has eyeballs and can look at me in a sad way, but because my aim is abysmal and every time I go target shooting the target remains safely unmolested.  But my ex-cop husband is like a sniper, so beware, all y’all.   

Lori Duff

Lori B. Duff is an award-winning author who practices law on the side.  Her latest book, “If You Did What I Asked in the First Place” was awarded the Gold Medal for humor in the Foreword INDIES awards in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook. For more blogs written by Lori, click here. For more information about Lori in general, click here. If you want Lori to do your writing for you, click here. If you want Lori to help you market your book, click here.