Comet Does NOT Make a Good Shampoo

Almost every Sunday all of the family would go to Grandma and Grandpa Vaughn's house for dinner. ( For those folks north of the Mason-Dixon line, "dinner" means the noontime meal.) My grandparents had ten children and then there were sixteen grandchildren. So by the time you add in spouses and various other relatives that might show up, there was always a house full of people just waiting to chow down on Grandma Sallie's good food.

My favorites were Grandma's wonderful fried chicken and especially her sweet tater pie! No one has ever been able to make that pie the way she did and I would give so much to be able to have a piece of it right now. You could always count on a jar of honey sitting in the middle of the table from Grandpa's honeybees, big glasses of icy cold homemade buttermilk (which I would not touch!) and fresh butter that Grandma had churned.

The thing that would make the visit all the more special was if my cousin, Norma Jean was there too. I was born just 19 days before Norma, so we were like two peas in a pod. The minute that we both got together, we would go off somewhere and play. Sometimes we would go outside, but that meant that our parents had to watch us carefully since Grandpa kept bees and being fascinated by the bee supers, I always wanted to get close to them. Also there was the danger of the Mayo River which flowed along two sides of the yard. If there was water, I was immediately drawn to it and my mom knew that, so she always had to watch me like a hawk watches chickens.

Me & Norma
circa 1967

When we couldn't go outside, we would wander into one of the rooms of the house where there were not so many people. Usually, that meant that we would go into one of the three bedrooms and play. One day, we we into the bathroom and we were sitting in the dry bathtub playing. I do remember that one of our parents came in there to check on us and all they saw was us innocently sitting in the tub. I'm sure that they thought to themselves what trouble could we possibly get into just sitting in a bathtub?

What they didn't notice was the can of Comet sitting on the side of the tub. 

<insert ominous drum roll here>

What happened next has been a source of amusement to Norma and me ever since. I'm not sure whose idea it was, but we decided to "shampoo" each others hair. With Comet. Oh yeah. I know what you are thinking, especially if you read the warnings on the can of Comet.

Maybe our parents should have read the label. 

Imagine being a parent and walking into the bathroom and finding your little girls with tons of Comet in their hair mixed up with some water.  I seem to remember that I was crying and probably with good reason since I had Comet burning my scalp off!  I can remember my mom telling people about finding us with Comet all in our hair and how hard it was to get it all out.  I also remember REALLY having something to cry about after I got a whipping for doing something that I KNEW was wrong in the first place.  And I did know.

Norma and I had many adventures over the years, and believe me, there are quite a few that you will never read about here!

Abt 1976

We still stay in touch via email and facebook, but we have not seen each other in person for about 14 years.

Copyright 2012--All Rights Reserved--The Wheel & Distaff by Kimberly Burnette-Dean