Jean Naté

Ok, show of hands, who remembers Jean Naté body splash? I remember visiting my grandmother’s house and my aunt had Jean Naté body splash. I still remember that great feeling of cooling when you put it on. We lived in the desert and as desert rat kids we played outside all day in the 115° summer sun (110° in the shade) without so much as a second thought. Sure, lessons on heat stroke and staying hydrated were a part of our in-born survival skills (along with heading for doorways during an earthquake), but we didn’t seem to notice the heat. There is nothing I remember more fondly, however, than being sweaty and hot and going into my aunts bedroom and drenching myself in her Jean Naté. It was a quick cool off that served the dual purpose of cooling me and masking the odor of hot sweaty puppy, which seems to be the universal smell of all hot children, with the cooling and refreshing scent of citrus. Funny how something that had to be so bad for your skin, I mean it had to be basically citrus scented alcohol, could feel so good. My poor aunt, she must have had to stock 3 or 4 bottles at a time to keep me in coolness, but she never said anything. I used to love to eat her Ultra Bright toothpaste too, couldn’t get enough of the flavor, but that’s another story. Do they still make those products?

I think of this today because it’s so stinkin’ hot and an oscillating fan just doesn’t do it for coolness when it’s darned near 100° outside and over 80° inside no matter how dark I keep it. And I’m getting sick of sitting in the dark all day. So I was fondly remembering how impervious I was to heat in those desert years how refreshing that citrusy splash was. When I go home these days I stay in San Diego, I have to be threatened with bodily injury – and even then I weigh the cost – to make me go to the desert. Ah, but at least that was a dry heat.

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We were invited to Carla’s end of the year school program. You know I can’t pass up a group of 3 & 4 year olds singing and dancing. Of course the weather all week had been hot. Highs in the 90’s all week, but what the heck I’d take a bottle of cold water with me and suffer through, after all, it’s for the kids.

J came with me and so did Barbara (J’s roommate) who is visiting us for the week on the last leg of her European summer vacation. (Hmmm, should ask her how Amsterdam was. ‘scusi, scusi’)

We arrived in time to join a crowd of proud parents and grandparents all trying to fit into the only patch of shade in the courtyard were the performance was to take place. Kids were rounded up and dragged from their parents to line up in three rows. Introductions were made and then the singing began. It was a typical little kid concert were only one third of the kids actually sang while the rest either stood in terrified silence, waved at their parents, made faces or just chatted amongst themselves. There were the usual types, the show-off who sang loudly and proudly making sure to make eye contact with everyone, the crier who stood there blubbering during the ENTIRE performance, the class clown who made faces and inappropriate gestures to the embarrassment of his parents and of course the wanderer who just walked away from the group following his own investigative agenda in the crowd. There was a song about a cat, a song about the 5 senses and a song about listening, I could be wrong since they were in French and I could barely hear them, but I watched their hand movements carefully and I think I may be right.

The singing was followed by a couple of dance numbers that were so absolutely adorable you couldn’t help but be won over by even the little class monster. The second dance was something like the hokey pokey. Clap your hands, slap your thighs, grab your partners hand and spin in a circle. Clap your hands, slap your thighs, link elbows with your partner and spin in a circle. Clap your hands…….grab your partners neck and spin…. grab your partners shoulders…, grab your partners waste…, grab your partners butt…. Oh yeah, I swear it was like a junior high slow dance with kids dancing in a slow circle with their little hands down on their partners butts. The French were not nearly as amused as us three Americans were. It was hard not to just let go and have a good laugh, but I didn’t want to insult anyone, and explaining how it was funny would have just proven all over again to the French how prudish and repressed Americans are.

Anyway, at that point it began to rain big fat drops of rain even though there was only one little grey cloud in the sky. It was a sunny rain, and since it appeared to be just the one cloud, we all stayed where we were and the children kept dancing. Soon those big fat drops began to come down a bit more rapidly, and we still stayed. Well then it was a full on downpour and everyone ran for the school. All week long, nothing but hot sunshine and on the day that I’m watching 3 and 4 year old French kids grope each other it decides to rain. Life’s not fair.

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S is home this weekend and since I’ve not been up to taking J and Barbara any place fun, he’s dragging them to rubble. He’s quite the rubble expert. Yesterday they came home hot and exhausted and they had drunk all of the water they’d taken with them. They’re out again today and today is even hotter than yesterday without so much as one little fluffy cloud in the sky. I guess I better make a big jug of lemonade or something.