Dettol, Darkie and Lead Poisoning

As I'm typing this, I'm trembling under my comforter as a sign that I must be having a fever and not long after, I'll be popping two pills of Nyquil so I can get a good night sleep. My throat is in pain whenever I swallow, hopefully it's not strep throat but I'm pretty good at self-diagnosing, so it probably is.



In this haze of throbbing pain, it got me missing a tormenting element of my childhood that is Dettol. Dettol was a greenish yellow antiseptic liquid that were sold widely in Asia. It's draw was a distinctive smell much like Pine-Sol and the burning sensation that proves it's working much like iodine. With the tag-line like kills 99.9% of germs, it was used as a household cleaning solution when diluted and when I was little, my grandma amongst other housewives put some in the water while bathing children.

I don't think I liked bathing too much when I was a child and the chemical burns that come along with Dettol didn't make it better. Yes, you feel clean after getting burned by Dettol and leave you a tingly sensation but it wasn't pleasant in any case. I'm pretty sure the company advertised that their product can be used for bathing but I couldn't find proof on YouTube that such an ad existed and after all these years they have widened their product line to include bathing solutions and hand soaps, probably with lighter effects than it used to. Though since I'm germy, I kinda missed that a little.

Another odd Asian hygiene product that was a toothpaste with an unfortunate name of Darkie. It was unfortunate because we didn't understand how racist it was and kept using the product. The Chinese name for it wasn't as offensive, it just meant "black person's toothpaste", using the stereotypical skin contrast that black people has that made their teeth seems whiter. It's a backhanded compliment, really. Since the English level of general Chinese wasn't that good, we didn't know the name brand would offend anyone. Though the logo that featured a black man wasn't exactly complimentary, some might even call it creepy. Years later, when Colgate-Palmolive bought the company in 1989, they have changed the name to "Darlie" and the logo also changed his skin color, though the Chinese name remained the same. Apparently Aunt Jemima has gone through some similar but not as drastic measures.



Other than that I remember getting lead poisoning after playing with a pack of questionable metallic colored crayons. It was made in China and after drawing with gold, bronze and silver for a while, I got nauseous and wanted to puke, my uncle just told me to lay off the crayon for a while and I turned back to normal. It's not until now that I understood what had happened to me. Oh memories, good thing I've survived. I'm not happy about getting sick in the beginning of a new year, though there is a single job prospect in sight, wish me luck!