The Joys of Living in the Low-Rent District

So I’m cruising home from points north and west, passing through a meth-head–infested slum that borders the canal to the north of the ’hood. My face itches. Again. Couple weeks ago, the dermatologist remarked that this particular kind of annoying itch is often caused by an overgrowth of the yeasts cells that naturally inhabit your skin. Not the kind, he said, that infects women, but just the ordinary everyday flora of the face that for one reason or another get out of hand. An inexpensive solution, he added, is simply to wash your face with Head & Shoulders shampoo, the stuff people use for itchy dandruff, which is caused by the same little critters.

This is not the type of woo-woo eco-friendly organic stuff sold at places like Sprouts, Trader Joe’s, and Whole Foods. While it may be available at Costco, I feel no inclination to buy a lifetime supply when I have no idea whether it’ll work. Nor have I felt any urge to make a special trip to the Safeway or to the run-down Albertson’s nearby.

Went into a Walgreen’s on the way back into town from Scottsdale last week. But there was only one little guy at the checkout, all alone in the store from what anyone could tell. Ten or twelve people were standing in line; some nut at the front was arguing with the fellow. Give the kid an average of two minutes per customer to move people through: that would be a twenty-minute wait. At an optimistic one minute per customer, we were still looking at 10 minutes of standing in line. No thanks. I put the junk back and left.

Okay. So there’s the backstory.

On the way homeward through the slum, I pass a CVS, a joint I patronize on rare occasions. It’s clean and usually has some version of whatever you need. This day I need a) a L’Oréal mascara wand, the kind with the white undercoat on one end and the black stuff on the other end; b) a bottle of non-aerosol hair spray; and c) the proposed Head & Shoulders.

In the make-up department, they do carry L’Oréal, but they do not carry mascara in that brand. Ohhhkayyy…

Now I search the shampoo aisle for a bottle of Head & Shoulders, and I can’t find it.

Huh? What kind of drugstore doesn’t carry dandruff shampoo?

I find a stockboy and ask him where the Head & Shoulders is to be found. He directs me to — get this! — a locked case!

No joke. The dandruff shampoo is kept under lock and key in this store. When I make some remark like “you have gotta be kidding,” he says, “if we don’t lock it up, people steal it.” It crosses my mind to ask how it’s used in the manufacture of meth. But I restrain myself. Who knows? Maybe the locals drink it.

Welp, there’s no such thing as easy: Head & Shoulders now comes in all sorts of vanity versions, not just the anti-dandruff variety. Most of them are just ordinary shampoo with various kinds of conditioners and BS in them.

Foolishly (what was I thinking?) I say, “Which one has the active ingredient?”

Of course, the kid has no clue. He’s not the brightest rhinestone on the cowboy shirt, I’ll tellya that. He says he doesn’t know, but I could go up to the pharmacist — he kindly offers to accompany me, he being friendly as a puppy — and ask which one has it. I say I have other things to do with my time than wait in line at a pharmacy counter to ask what’s in a bottle of dandruff shampoo, and I suggest that reading the ingredients would be a faster way to figure this out.

This possibility has never occurred to the kid. Now he proposes to hand me one bottle at a time of each of about eight or ten variants, so I can study the contents. One at a time. Lest given free access to the shampoo safe I might make off with one, I suppose. Silently, I wonder how the lad ever learned to tie his shoelaces.

Oh well.

I leave without the mascara and without the shampoo, but do pick up the single bottle of spritz-type hairspray in the store. When I get this stuff home, I discover why it was sitting there, all by its lonesome: the squirt nozzle doesn’t work. Somebody else must have brought it back.

And now I’ll have to drive back up there sometime in the next few days and take it back myself.

I imagine this is what it’s like in any retail store that caters to poor folks. Sucks to be poor, doesn’t it?