What does your medicine cabinet say about you?

Remember the “Seinfeld’’ episode in which Jerry finds an anti-fungal cream in his girlfriend’s medicine cabinet? It drives him crazy imagining why she might have such a thing in there.

I saw it again the other night. Funny stuff.

Then I read in Dear Abby that some people make a habit out of going through their hosts’ medicine cabinet when they visit. I decided I better take a look inside our medicine cabinet to see what was going on in there.

If you’re reading this in the bathroom, as many people tell me they do, you might want to go through yours, too. Before your next houseguests do.

Our medicine cabinet is jam-packed with the usual assortment. Shaving cream. Deodorant. Aspirin. Band-Aids. Tums for the tummy. ...

And some not so usual stuff.

There are enough of those tiny bars of soap to stock all the hotel rooms in Fairview Heights. Whenever we go on vacation, we figure we haven’t gotten our money’s worth until we nab all the soaps, lotions, shampoos, conditioners, shoehorns, shoe polishers and shower caps that they put in the room each day.

Stay four nights at Disney World. Get four soaps with Mickey’s face embossed on them. As far as I know, no one in our family has ever actually worn a shower cap, but we have a year’s supply of them if we ever start.

There are a couple pair of tweezers. The business ends don’t come anywhere near meeting. If you had a splinter the size of a pencil, they’d work just fine. I don’t think they’d close on a wild eyebrow hair, but if you ever get one of those Q-Tip ends lodged in your ear, call me.

My shaving stuff takes up a whole shelf. There’s the fancy razor that I just can’t seem to remember to buy replacement blades for. It’s next to the replacement blades for the razor I had before I bought the fancy razor and have since thrown away. And three disposable razors. The one I opened this morning that is responsible for the three little pieces of toilet paper on my chin. Too sharp. The one that’s been in there for a month but I still use on sideburns to get my money’s worth. Too dull. And the one that Goldilocks would say is “just right.’’

The trouble is, at 6 o’clock in the morning, I can’t remember which is which. Ouch.

There’s a whole slew of eyedrops, creams and ointments that might come in handy some day — if we ever catch again what we had when we bought them. And enough out-of-date prescription medicine to wipe out the disease-du jour in a Third World Country.

There are pins, buttons, 23 cents in change and a Q-Tip with something green on one end.

All in all, a pretty boring medicine cabinet.

Nothing like the one my folks used to stock.

When my cousins from Germantown would come over, one of our favorite pastimes was “mixing chemicals” in the bathroom sink. We’d pull in chairs to stand on, put the rubber stopper in the sink and start dumping.

Mom and Pop had all kinds of neat stuff in there that you don’t see anymore.

There was green foot powder that Pop sprinkled in his work boots. Shake, shake.

There were little tins of “drawing salve.’’ When I was little, I though that meant I could draw on the bathroom wall with it. It smelled nasty but it gave our sink concoction a gooey consistency.

There was a bottle of bright yellow “sweet oil.’’ It was supposed to be good for earaches and it felt really warm going in. Splash, splash.

Toss in a little Listerine, Bactine, Alka-Seltzer, Epsom salts, Burma Shave, Aqua Velva, Old Spice, and a little dab of Brylcreem and things would really start to cook.

One time we put in a little hydrogen peroxide and our concoction got to smoking.

We tore out of the bathroom yelling “Fire! Fire!’’

Pop came running to the rescue, flushed it down, opened the windows and turned on the fans. I don’t know what we created but we could smell it for a month. And that sink drain never worked better.

Sometimes I wonder what my cousins and I could create with all the stuff in our medicine cabinet today. But don’t worry, we won’t use the anti-fungal cream from the top shelf.

Now, how did that get in there?

This story was originally published August 1, 2015 at 5:50 AM with the headline "What does your medicine cabinet say about you?."