Swagger

The bottle of Shampoo sat on the counter in the Kitchen. Her husband had just set it down. The red bottle said “Swagger”. Filly laughed.

“Swagger” she said. “Really”?

“It was six bucks” her husband said. But it smells good.”

“That is why you buy shampoo, because it smells good”?

“Well also because it is shampoo and conditioner in one” He said.

Filly thought about that. It was funny that her husband had picked “Swagger” shampoo. Also funny that he wanted to get it all done in one fell swoop, shampoo and condition. Filly believed that hair first had to be clean, before the condition should be added. How could a product clean hair and coat hair at the same time?

“Not possible” she said.

“They have figured out the secret how to do that” Her husband said.

Had they figured out the secret, Filly wondered? So many “secrets” that the government supposedly had kept under control that were NOT under control at all, and in fact were being exploited. But people had trusted…that “they” knew what they were doing…. all the way to the bank.

“There is no secret, you can’t clean hair if your coating it with conditioner at the same time”Filly said. “But hey at least it smells good”. She wondered how her husband was able to smell shampoo…weren’t the bottles sealed so that they could not be smelled?

Filly was not sure. But she was sure that the name of the shampoo had influenced her husband. If the name of the shampoo had been “tiptoe” instead of “swagger”, she was pretty sure he would not have purchased it.

He never borrowed her shampoo. And he had also not wanted to borrow the sander from the neighbor next door either, to sand their front door and re-seal it. He was at the moment, admiring the new sander he had just bought to save money from paying someone else to sand the front door. It cost a lot more than six dollars.

“They were going to charge starting at three hundred bucks to refinish the door” he said. “This sander had holes in it so it is a dustless sander. The last one on the shelf”, he added, proud to have scored.

Filly did not comment. Their next door neighbor loved to sand furniture and refinish it. She had a set of saw horses and was often out sanding as if it was the most fun thing in the world to do ever. She would be out there for hours on weekends. She would have loaned him the sander for sure. No problem. But he would have had to “swagger ”over and ask permission to use her sander.

Not gonna happen. He would rather spend fifty bucks on a new sander, and save less on refinishing the door than have to ask permission. Lol.

So, saving money made him feel swagger, but spending money also made him feel swag. Swagger for him meant taking charge, and making decisions. Independent. Free.

She could relate to that. The swagger of saving money first…kind of like how regular citizens in the country were excited that responsible people like Elon Musk were saving bucks for regular people, by figuring out how the government employees and officials had been fraudulently wasting taxpayer money. It made people feel like they had achieved some level of swag. They were not duped any more by lies and cheating. Government “secrets” exposed.

So then there was the swag of spending money, and as citizens they had no problem spending their own hard earned cash money to buy a Tesla or buy a membership to X. Helping to support the men on the force behind reform and restitution, made even the most frugal man, want to have some spending swag as well. People did not mind making choices on how to spend their hard earned dollars on their own, but they did not appreciate the government pretending to be doing good with tax dollars, while deceptively pocketing and funding self serving power mongering enterprises… bankrupting things like social security.

Her phone dinged. It was her sister, sending a photo from North Carolina of the Carolina Jasmine vine growing on the fence in her back yard. Filly had purchased the plant as a housewarming gift for her sister and for two years, the plant had survived. Now it was blooming. Her sister had painstakingly trained the plant to grow on the fence. She had watered it and added fertilizer. Now the plant was in full bloom, yellow fragrant flowers everywhere. Her sister was taking full credit for the success.

That plant and her sister, had Swagger for sure…AND the flowers smelled good. Filly wondered if those flowers were the fragrance within the shampoo her husband bought. She smiled as her husband continued to inspect the sander, and she stood up took the shampoo into the bathroom. People could learn from smart men like her husband… and real swagger like husbands and wives, could not be borrowed, and had to be earned.