Object-ives #35: Slippery Soap and the Wrinkle People

A bath-time ritual, an imaginary family, and the small plastic soap figure that helped us through

Slippery Soap ready to “Whoa!”

Slippery Soap, a character from Blue’s Clues, still lives on the edge of my bathtub. He is smaller than he used to be, worn down from years of use, his lavender color faded and his edges rounded smooth. My son is college-aged now, but if I pick his figure up with wet hands, he still slides easily along the tub, as if motion is his natural state.

When my son was three, baths were hard. He was afraid of the tub, but he was even more upset by what came after. When the tips of his fingers wrinkled in the water, he panicked. He didn’t like how his fingertips looked. He didn’t like that his body changed without warning. Each bath ended in distress.

So I made up the Wrinkle People.

The Wrinkle People, I told him, only came out after a bath. They were shy and kind and only appeared for a short time. They lived in the wrinkles at the tips of his fingers and disappeared as soon as the skin smoothed out again. The only way to meet them was to get clean. If you waited quietly, they would come.

I kept my hands in the water while he bathed so the Wrinkle People would visit me too. At the end of each bath, I lifted my son from the water, wrapped him in a towel, and we waited together. When the wrinkles appeared, we touched the tips of our fingers together. I told him how lucky we were that the Wrinkle People had come for both of us, that they could feel connected, that they were part of our family too.

The problem was getting him into the tub in the first place. My son loved Blue’s Clues. He watched it closely, memorized it, acted out all the characters. Slippery Soap was his favorite. He would imitate him, shouting “Whoa!” when things slipped or fell. I noticed this, and I followed it.

I bought the little Blue’s Clues bath toys so Slippery Soap could come into the tub with him. Slippery Soap was how I got him into the water at all. We both knew Slippery Soap loved baths. I gave him a voice. Slippery Soap slid along the porcelain, shouting “Whoa!” when the water splashed. He needed company. He needed a friend. He knew about the Wrinkle People and could help us find them.

Once my son was in the water, the conversation began. My son talked to Slippery Soap. Slippery Soap talked back. “Whoa!” my son said. “Whoa!” Slippery Soap answered. I kept my hands in the water the entire time so the Wrinkle People would visit me too.

Baths stopped being a battle. Slippery Soap did his job quietly and well. The Wrinkle People came and went. My son grew older. The rituals changed.

Slippery Soap stayed.

Years passed. My son found new ways to move through the world. He learned how to stand on a stage, how to listen and respond, how to trust timing and instinct. He is now enrolled in a comedy improv B.A. program at Columbia College in Chicago. I don’t trace a straight line from Slippery Soap to where he is now, but I know the Wrinkle People belong to that story too.

And to tell you a secret, sometimes even after all these years, when I’m sitting in the tub, I pick up Slippery Soap and softly say, “Whoa,” just to remind myself of all that we’ve been through.

Nettie Reynolds is an essayist and playwright based in Chicago. Her work explores caregiving, family life, and the quiet rituals that shape how people learn to live with one another. She writes personal essays about attention, adaptation, and the ordinary objects that carry memory. Nettie is finishing her MFA in Creative Nonfiction through The Sena Jeter Naslund-Karen Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University.

Object-ives features flash nonfiction essays of 500-999 words on the possessions we can’t stop thinking about.

Recommended reading about possessions:

Ode to a wax cherry gift by Jessy Easton, AFTER/WORDS (Note)

“Your Kids Will Inherit a Beautiful Archive of a Childhood That Never Happened” by Found Object

“Five Ways I Remember My Mother” by Sheri Handel, Bite-Sized Storytelling Boost

“Family Stuff” by Rachel Dickinson, The Loneliest Places

“What I Really Want for Mother’s Day is a Tray” by Victoria Wolff, Our Amagansett House

“The Art of Gifting Thoughtfully” by Maya Top, Folded Napkins

“I paid $1,000 to get my house under control” by Julie Kling, Business Insider

“The perfect shopping day in New York” by Eliza Brooke and Emilia Petrarca, The Scumbler

“Isabel Allende and Her Mother Told Each Other (Almost) Everything” by Anna Martin, The New York Times’ Modern Love podcast

“Lost and Found in the Subway: Dentures Galore” by James Barron, The New York Times