I’ve got a problem.

At this point in my life, I can’t figure out whether I’m married to the high school cheerleader that still takes my breath away when she’s all gussied up, to Rebecca Boone, or Tipper Gore.

Confused?

Welcome to my world . . .

I’m pretty sure the blonde in there on the computer looking for “home-made” soap recipes and such, really is the “I do” from back then.

Rebecca and Tipper?

Rebecca was wed to Daniel and was a woman of some toughness and note on the frontier. Tipper is the blonde who has just bailed out on Albert, the guy who invented the Internet (he said he did) and is trying to head off the “Big Thaw” up north of here.

(Stay with me, OK . . . or go ahead and get to church)

This all started when I overheard the former cheerleader on the phone with Susie (my son’s high school majorette) cheerleading for 20 Mule Team Borax, Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda and Fels-Naptha “heavy duty laundry bar soap.”

Didn’t think all that much about that, being as I remembered 20 Team Borax from “Death Valley Days,” a 50s TV series that Ronald Reagan hosted but left to become governor of California and then president of The United States of America.

Mr. Reagan sold a lot of 20 Mule Team as well as refrigerators for General Electric (forgot that didn’t you . . . and that while he was huckstering for GE, he actually visited the GE plant in Oxford).

I’ve been familiar with Arm & Hammer ever since my dad insisted my mom use at least one full box in her nightly cornbread mix. Talk about “yeller!”

I’d never heard of “Fels-Naptha” bar soap, but when I heard the cheerleader say it was needed to make soap, washing detergent, and fabric softener, and that making all that stuff was really cheaper than buying Tide or Downey or Camay, well, that sort of pleased me.

Which is when I decided that if I didn’t still have the cheerleader, I had a fine figure of a pioneer woman who had my back and knew (always) what was best for me.

Hey, like little ol’ Becky Boone re-incarnated.

And I complimented her on such.

“Has nothing to do with pioneering,” she said. “This stuff I’m making is environmentally friendly, it will save the planet.”

Well, hello Tipper . . . huh?

And it was somewhere in there that two things occurred.

1. I got introduced to “Fels-Naptha” bar soap when we stopped by Publix at Eastwood in Birmingham. We left with every bar they had, 18 or so.

2. Between all that soap and boxes and boxes of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda and 20 Mule Team Borax, the back of the cheerleader’s truck (OK, mini-van) was so low it looked like a load of white whiskey coming out of North Carolina.

Also, so much for “cheaper.”

Is there a point here?

Well, there are times when your wife watching home improvement channels is no worse than researching the ‘net on how to save the planet.

One other thing . . .

If we woke up this morning on this side of Armageddon, it’s a good guess the cheerleader saved the planet for at least another day.

One other thing . . .

Sometimes I want to cry, sometimes I want to laugh . . . but at NO time am I ever bored.

George Smith can be reached at 239-5286 or e-mail: gsmith731@gmail.com