A Possible Lucid Explanation for the OxiClean Man

Take the OxiClean one, for example. I have never understood why the bearded guy in these series of commercials feels compelled to scream out the virtues of this product, as though yelling out everything at ear-splitting levels will persuade me to make a purchase.

Is there some personal life trauma that has produced this yelling fixation?

Let’s call him “Fred”, for clarity and try to imagine what kind of background inspired this tendency to bellow every remark he makes.

I picture little”Fred” being born during Woodstock, which his “flower children” parents Erlene and Babaloo attend, as thousands of roaring fans egg her on to, “Breathe and push! Breathe and push!” An 8 pound, 6 ounce bouncing baby boy arrives, via natural childbirth, as Jimi Hendrix launches into “Purple Haze.”

Sadly, his parents break up the following day when Babaloo ditches his wife and new offspring for an Iron Butterfly groupie and moves to Haight-Ashbury to open his own incense shop.

Heartbroken, Erlene and Fred move to Illinois, where the struggling mom rents a small room in a building near a construction site. While she works at a downtown diner at nights, she leaves her baby boy in the care of her young teenaged neighbor Sam Kinison, whose unique renditions of bedtime stories keep the child wide awake all night.

Erlene finds love again and marries Carlos, a temperamental flamenco dancer, who often practices his routines into the wee hours, as the floor vibrates underneath his stepson’s crib. Incensed by Fred’s constant wailing, Carlos tells Erlene she must choose between the two of them. Desperate to save her marriage, Erlene bundles up the boy and leaves him, with a note and diaper bag,.outside the back door of a drum shop. Kindly store owner Wolfgang and his wife Helga, who have prayed for their very own child, take Fred in, making him a makeshift crib out of an old bass drum. A tragedy nearly occurs when Wolfgang mistakenly ships the bass drum containing the toddler to a marching band camp and Fred is nearly hit with a mallet during a rehearsal of John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

When the state finds out about this, they remove little Fred from the drum maker’s home and he is put in an orphanage, until the age of 3, when the Vittleclopper family officially adopts him. The Vittlecloppers, who own a fireworks company, raise the boy up to learn the workings of their business and he is routinely exposed to 140 decibels a day as mom and pop experiment with their latest creations.

Though there is a lot of love between Fred and his adoptive parents, they become estranged when he tells them, at the age of 35, that he does not wish to be a part of the fireworks business anymore, but wants to pursue his own destiny.

Fred has difficulty maintaining stable employment, finding, then losing jobs as a librarian, meditation instructor and dog psychologist. He is fired from all these positions for causing clients undue levels of stress because of his earsplitting voice. His misery is compounded when Lucille, the love of his life, breaks their engagement after he attempts to whisper sweet nothings in her right ear and she ends up with a 60% hearing loss.

Deeply depressed, Fred contemplates jumping into the Chicago River.

“GOODBYE, CRUEL WORLD!” he shouts, prepared to end it all.

Just then, a passerby walks up to him, smiling with excitement.

“Say that again!” the stranger demands.

” I SAID, ‘GOODBYE, CRUEL WORLD!'” Fred repeats, puzzled.

“My boy,” the man says, putting a fatherly arm around Fred’s shoulder,”my company is looking for a spokesman with his own special kind of delivery to promote our product. I had despaired of ever finding the perfect person, but here you are, about to throw yourself into the river right in front of my face! Why, with your volume and our stain-fighting magic, we will have our competitors groveling in the dust! Come with me, son, and we will make millions upon millions!”

Overjoyed, Fred goes off with the man and becomes a part of television commercial history.

Thus, I offer this story as a possible explanation for the vocally intense renderings of the “OxiClean Man.”