The Oatmeal Tastes like Soap

The last few days the oatmeal has tasted like soap. Maybe the soap that's being used to wash the pot that boils the water is the cause. I drank some of the water out of the pot and it doesn't taste like soap. It must be the oats. Join me now, reader, and the soapmeal will be our launch point into the imaginative layer of reading.

There, look down below the clouds and trees and look through the tops of buildings with your special reading eyes. We can see the oatmeal factory and the oatmeal man, hard at work shaving oatmeal flakes off of an enormous oatmeal log. We see the great oatmeal forests off in the distance. The oatmeal pines are still chopped down by axe and brawn and dragged by a team of mules to the oatmill where they are cut and processed. Oatmeal binds this community together.

Back to the oatmeal man, Tom. Tom uses his planer and takes a mighty shave off the oatmeal log which produces a singular beautiful slim scrap of oatmeal that will be cut up and sent to Kroger in a cardboard tube. And then, having completed this well-practiced maneuver, Tom reaches into his pockets where he has about three to four bars of Dial soap in each pocket. Tom swishes and swashes his hands around to get a good lather going in his deep, specially made soap pockets, He removes his hands from his pockets and gives about two or three good loose shakes to get the excess suds off and goes back to this work. All day long Tom makes elegant strips of oatmeal and engulfs his hands in the sweet embrace of bar soap.

You can only tell people to wash their hands more, thinks Tom. You can't tell someone to wash their hands less. That's not how it works. That's not the world that was promised to me when I decided to be a part of it.

And now my oatmeal tastes like soap.