Cait and Marty are “Jarheads” - the name given to Carmex devotees.

Carmex has been made by the Woelbing family in Franklin, Wisconsin, since 1937. A skosh of menthol and a smidge of camphor mixed with lanolin, cocoa butter, phenol and salicylic acid in a wax base gives a cool, soothing sensation to dry lips.

Cait discovered Carmex about 20 years ago on a field trip to Minneapolis while she was in art school. Marty discovered it about the same time in a Boston drug store. (Once when Cait was crossing back into her home country of Canada, the only thing she declared at Customs was five pots of Carmex.)

Carmex stays put after it is applied, is not overly shiny and doesn’t make you look like you are wearing gobs of lip gloss from junior high.

Carmex - a Gimpy Girls staple in winter - even has a cult following and its own urban myths. (Google it on the Internet sometime).

The comedian Paula Poundstone once joked, “I chaperoned a school field trip, and I kid you not, that Carmex went around the bus like it was the water of life. I did them a favor by confiscating it and dropping it off a ravine. There’s probably a squirrel out there right now who just can’t get enough of that tub of carmex.”

Learn more about Carmex from Oprah.

Buy a tub

Eds. Note: If you can buy this locally, do it. You’ll get a much better price than going through the Internet where the shipping costs often are much more than the price of a tub or a tube of Carmex.