Stamp
Nov 3, 2023

I've started a new life, the bubble stamp life. Rather than an indisctinct ball of foam descending on my hands before washing them, I now get to appreciate this paw-print:

The foaminess of it kind of reminds me of the low-res pictures of sugarcakes that are used in Tail of the Sun as items. When corporal forms are injected into your computer, they become ghost-like, just like this little cat paw.

The machine that makes them looks like this:

You press your palm flat against the disk at the top. Push down and a paw print forms, sticking to your hand. Whenever I encounter one of these devices meant to bring more joy to your bathroom, I can't help but wonder about all the other bathroom-joy devices I haven't yet seen. I wonder about the other sorts of people who buy them. Do they also have floss containers in the shape of bear heads? A panda shower mat? A bidet that plays "Old MacDonald" whenever you run it?

When I was a kid my mom would always yell at me for squeezing my toothpaste from the center of the tube rather than folding the back forward like she does. She told me that no woman will ever love me if I continue squeezing from the center, since women are by nature neat and cannot stand an element of chaos like myself entering their home. Later on, once I met girls who let me into their bathrooms, I discovered every single one of them squeezed their toothpaste tubes from the center rather than performing the elaborate ritual of neatness my mom apparently does everytime she brushes her teeth.

My mom was a preschool and is now a nanny. She spends all day with little kids, engaging in all the things little kids love. Yet all of her bathrooms were so cold and adult. I can't imagine bubble stamps ever showing up in my mom's bathroom. I had to cross a continent and an ocean to get into the mental state where I could dare to engage in the bubble stamp life.

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