I am a firm believer in finding humor in weird places. I think street signs can be funny. I think that commercials for prescription medications are hilarious (“if you don’t take this, you could die; but we are also obligated to say that if you take this, it could kill you”). And a while ago, I discovered that reading the fine print on a tube of lotion could make my week. Don’t believe me? Well let me try to prove you wrong . . .

Like most products of this kind, this particular tube of lotion was festooned with various descriptions of how it smelled and felt. Whoever was writing this apparently had some sort of speech impediment that required inserting an adjective at least every other word. It wasn’t just “lavender”; it was “French lavender.” It wasn’t just “honey”; it was “sunkissed honey.” Good grief, spell check is now telling me that “sunkissed” isn’t even a word. To me, this seems like an awkward way to talk. Imagine: “I industriously purchased some sparkling cat litter at the colossal big-box store today.” Beyond sounding weird, this adjective-heavy way of writing calls into question whether we really care. I mean, if the vanilla wasn’t Tahitian, would anybody really notice? But maybe they have already figured this out. Maybe the “Burmese wildflower” scent is just a bunch of daisies that someone at the lotion factory accidentally ran over with a lawnmower. Consumers of the world, when you are promised “sunkissed honey,” you should demand that the honey is actually sunkissed! Somehow I doubt that will ever become a battle cry for the proletariat.

Ok, moving on. Another thing I noticed was that, for all its exotic descriptors implying that the scent was powerful enough to transport you bodily to a chateau in Southern France, the company was actually based in Ohio. I have nothing against Ohio. I am sure that Ohio is a fine place to live in many respects. But when I think of Ohio, words like “exotic” and “luxurious” are not the first to pop into my head. It was sort of like finding out that some fine wine with a fancy name and a jaw-dropping price came from a vineyard in Topeka. Or that the chief engineer at NASA went by “Bubba.” Nothing wrong with Topeka or people going by “Bubba.” But . . . really?

Another thing that caught my eye on the tube of body lotion, and I am probably insane to go here, was the notation “NOT TESTED ON ANIMALS.” I realize that this is an important consideration that has gotten a lot of attention over the years, so believe me, I am not trying to argue that we should test products on animals. But as one ignorant of the ramifications of animal testing, I am a bit curious as to what it would look like for scented lotion. The image that comes to mind is a bunch of people in lab coats making notations like “Applied to mouse #17 of test group B. After application, mouse #17’s skin showed significant improvements in hydration.” Or maybe we are actually talking about something a bit more sinister: “Upon application of product, mouse #3 spontaneously combusted. Would describe smell as ‘sunkissed.’” Just for the record, I am a dog person, so I am not in favor of being cruel to animals. I guess my question is if the lotion were tested on animals, what on earth would we be testing for?

And the topic of animals brings us to my last and favorite description of the body cream. You see, one of the major scents in this particular body cream was “white oak musk.” This got me thinking. I had heard of musk before. I had some vague notion that it was a popular scent. But I had no idea what it was. After some research, I am still not very clear on what musk is. I had a tendency, upon hearing the word “musk,” to automatically add the word “ox” or “rat.” But I doubted that the desirable and seductive scent of musk oil had anything to do with, well, an ox or a rat. I was wrong. I learned that, while most musk scents are synthetic these days, these synthetic versions are designed to imitate a unique smell found in nature. Specifically certain kinds of deer, oxen, ducks, and, yes, rats. Please tell me I am not the only person who finds this funny.

I like lotion as much as the next guy. My skin gets dry in the winter, and a good moisturizer is the only thing that keeps my hands from doing a fairly convincing imitation of the Bonneville Salt Flats. So I have nothing against lotion. I just think that its descriptions are funny. So now, the next time you put on lotion, you can question whether the nectarine is actually from Provence, you can rest assured that there are no white mice out there with really smooth and possibly combustible paws, and you can be proud of the fact that you now smell like a large rodent. And that rodent is probably sunkissed.