REAL MEN IN TUBS -- Does YOUR Man Do Bubbles?

Not enough hasn´t been written about the subject of men in tubs, but I can´t ignore it any longer. Today I´m taking a bubble bath, and now is the time for all good men to rise up and sit down together with one voice on this issue.

Yes, my dear dedicated he-men, you CAN be a MAN and still revel in the sweet retreat of airy soap globule immersion. I mention this only because women have long known about and withdrawn to the rejuvenating properties of this submersive activity, but men have suffered a fearful loathing of the bubbly sanctuary ever since Charlotte Corday prepared the bath for Jean Paul Marat.

Thus, this week, here´s a little heart, head and handbook for my bubble-hearted brethren:

Gentlemen, the array and supply of bubble bath soaps, oils, foams, gels, salts and even teas, are endless. You may thank me for doing the "cleansing infusion of urban technology and trends" research for you. Now you won´t have to wander the supermarket soap sections and spend half your day opting for whichever concoction seems your optimum apothecary blend of handcrafted and home-fomented foaming spices. Forget all that. Just dump in the Mr. Bubble (I prefer Bubbleberry with Aloe) and begin.

My research reveals that the FDA has received only one male consumer complaint on the above product, and it claimed an "unspecified injury." I suspect this had more to do with the complainant´s ingress or egress from the tub, but I didn´t investigate further.

Prepare your bath & brain equally. The ensuing soothing qualities and playful boyhood regressions you´ll encounter in your nostalgic, effervescing abandon will serve for naught, if you haven´t first rinsed out the tub wall cat hairs or the Oxi-Clean residue left behind after your Sweetie used the tub to bleach the lace curtains. (Gentlemen, let´s not be the first male consumer who files an FDA complaint citing a very specified injury.)

As for your mental prep work, you must recapture the innocent child´s mindset you once had when you could still shared a bath with your splashy siblings. Long before tubs were instruments of hygiene, they were childhood romping pools.

For this, you can either step into a 1950´s time machine ... or lock the bathroom door.

Tub toys are optional, but encouraged. Plastic or rubber, animated or static, plain or elaborate, let your imagination fill in the blanks. I personally prefer floatables that will serve as quasi-jellyfish, mermaids, sea mines and enemy submarines. Extra points if you can assemble anything resembling a pirate flotilla or a mysterious and forbidden archipelago.

Thanks to a chronic case of excessive manhood, if you can´t find the reversions necessary to produce the requisite self-playfulness, might I suggest an extended game of "Up Periscope Off Rocky Point." Or, "Damn The Torpedoes, I´m Neptune!"

Or, to the more adventurous among us, a spirited game of "Barney´s Bubble Rubble" will do nicely to ease off the machismo, embrace a long-gone boy´s imaginings, and soften your heart. An extended dousing in your steaming vessel will also produce those fingertip hydro-sucking wrinkles that will, in turn, generate a grand finale of the notorious "Loch Ness Monster Versus The Skin Beast Battle For The Goo-Boy Championship Of Bubble Bay!"

Careful, don´t go too far. I hope I don´t have to forewarn you about attempting a universal plugging/rescue maneuver, when you imagine that all cosmic evil has conspired to drip from your tub faucet and you are the sole aquatic superhero with the only form-fitting big toe that can stop the leak and save the world.

Don´t do it. Unless you want to be the most infamous domestic extraction ever performed by your local firemen, don´t even think about it.

Lastly, don´t forget to shape up a few shampoo horns, pompadour sculptures, beard shadows, Elephant Man mutations. Add those spitty tongue motor noises you splurt when reconnoitering your battlewagons. And, no self-respecting revisitation to simpler times would be complete without at least one attack of flatulent, depth charge countermeasures. We´ll just leave it there, hanging in the air, where the surfacing "death mist" once wiped out your little brother´s entire armada of battleships.

If you´ve performed your sudsplay with the proper spirit, the whole event should unclog the Ever-Ever-Land of grown-up congestion, at least until you pull the plug. Even then, as the tub drains, don´t miss the departing contest of wills when you fight off "The Psycho Whirlpool Avenger!"

Today, good sirs, take a hot bath break, be the buoys in the bubbles, have a grand look back, and I´ll meet you on the high sees.

Syndicated humor columnist B. Elwin Sherman writes from upstate NH. Copyright 2009 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved. Used here with permission. This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Electronic or print reproduction, adaptation, or distribution without permission is prohibited. Ordinary internet links to this column at his Humorist-On-Loan blog may be distributed without written permission.