Sometimes a familiar sight conjures back memories of the surreal and the eternally memorable (as well as a loved one’s soulful laughter).
Walking the aisles at our town Walmart sent me back in time recently. Whether I was hunting for gel pens, hair paste or gummy sharks is something now lost to time and memory.
What I do remember is seeing that container. In all its glory. Like the shadow of a circling vulture, impending doom, or the wonder of an eclipse, there it was—a container of OxyPads.
“It’s been a while, old friend,” I said, without saying a word.
When I was in middle and high school, the ‘90s and the turn of the millennium crashed into society and brought with them the most psychedelic, extreme drinks and foods ever to offend the natural colour palette. It was as if the ectoplasmic slime from Ghostbusters had somehow been carbonated like champagne and marketed to us Xennials. And I’m not kidding. It was called Hi-C Ecto Cooler.
As sweet as those times were, there is always a cost to building a stairway to heaven. Our price of admission was our complexions. Blemishes aplenty. I have often wondered whether data would show a positive correlation between the rise of neon snack foods and the booming sales of anti-acne products. It feels like it would. It was truly signs of the times.
I didn’t escape it either. Dorito 3Ds and Surge were debts accrued and companies like the owners Oxy and Stridex were there to collect. Across my cheeks, across the general landscape of teenage existence, the battle was on. Back then, our rite of passage into adulthood wasn’t a driver’s licence or a first job. It was the complexion defender we chose.
And there it was again, on our Walmart shelf. A flood of memories came rushing back. One in particular.
I promise I am not making this up.
It was a Sunday night. My parents were in the living room watching a sitcom or maybe the news. I was getting ready for the week ahead.
Laundry done—check. Shower and brushed teeth—check and check.
Homework completed? Let’s call that aspirational and lightly hopeful.
The bathroom in our old house was often dim when a candle was burning. Sometimes there was a small nightlight casting just enough glow to turn the bathroom decorations into part of the nature landscape that was the decor. I trusted that ambiance to guide me into Monday morning without adding another cautionary tale to my résumé.
I was still deep in the minefield then, always trying to head off the next blemish o’plenty before it appeared across the topography of my face. I opened the bathroom closet (our great domestic archive of towels, medicine and mysterious things no one had touched in years) and reached into the dark. My hand found the familiar shape: the round plastic container of Oxy cleansing pads.
Unmistakable.
I opened it. Standing there at the mirror, I started scrubbing my face. That familiar medicinal smell filled the room. Sharp. Clean. Clinical. Reassuring, even.
Then something felt off.
Very off.
First came the tingling. Not a normal skincare tingling, either. This was the kind of tingling that suggested my face had been wrapped in a mask made of television static. Then came numbness, as if I had somehow used novocaine in a neti pot. Then tightness. Real tightness. The kind of tightness that makes you suddenly aware that skin, while useful, is maybe not something you want shrink-wrapped.
I honestly wondered if I was moments away from becoming a medical mystery.
Was this the end? A stroke? Some sort of chemical peel gone rogue? Was I in the middle of transforming into someone else entirely?
Panic set in.
I flung open the bathroom door and half-ran into the hallway, then into the living room. It was the kind of entrance that immediately tells everyone something has gone terribly wrong. I was stumbling over my words, trying to explain that something was happening to my face and that whatever it was, I did not care for it.
“I was just washing my face with the Oxy pads,” I managed to blurt out, “and now I think I might need an exorcist.”
My parents were trying to piece the situation together while I stood there in full distress, holding up the container like the key piece of evidence in a criminal trial. I presented it toward the light with all the dramatic tension of a game show reveal.
And then it hit me.
White plastic containers with labels are not exclusive to Oxy.
I turned it just enough to read.
There it was.
Not Oxy.
Tuck’s.
Tuck’s medicated pads.
For hemorrhoids.
The witch hazel was still hard at work while I tried to comprehend that spooky h-word, making my face feel like a mannequin attempting its first smile. I read the label out loud, slowly, like my brain was buffering in real time.
“Tuck’s… medicated… pads…”
It was the first time I had ever seen my stepdad go from nearly asleep to uncontrollable laughter in under a second. A full, explosive, can’t-breathe kind of laughter. The kind that instantly makes everyone else start laughing too, even before the full situation has finished downloading into their brain.
To this day, that story still gets retold. With enthusiasm. With embellishment. With just enough dramatic flair to qualify as a Shakespearean tragedy, if Shakespeare had ever written about teenage skincare disasters.
Standing there in Walmart decades later, it felt like time had folded in on itself. There it was again, the same style of container sitting innocently on a shelf, carrying with it all the potential for confusion, chaos, and unintended consequences.
I gave it a small nod of respect.
“Well played.”
Because somehow, somewhere along the way, that cleanser not only disappeared, it left behind a perfect body double like a crafty dictator. An act of domestic espionage so seamless it would make a spy proud. I inquired about how it was managed but faced only silence.
And in my best Bruce Willis voice, directed at no one in particular, I quietly said:
“Okay, Oxy… you keep your secrets.”
Robert Horton is an educator, author, orator and linguist. He is a member of Rainy River First Nations.
