No Sliver Too Small

Back when I was working and trying to do research, I said often that I frequently got good ideas while either showering or doing the dishes.

Really.

Anyway, I now use bar soap in my shower at home, exclusively. No more ‘shower gels’ in a bottle for me, give me a bar of Ivory or Dove. It occurred to me the other day that there is no sliver of bar soap so small that you cannot use it to get one more wash in. I reach into the soap dish, and find this miniscule piece of bar soap, because I noticed how tiny it was the last time I showered but then forgot about it as soon as I stepped out of the shower, so now here I am, the water cascading down on me, holding this tinier yet sliver of soap.

But that’s the thing, it does not matter, you can just take that sliver, rub it on yourself or on a washcloth, depending on what showering technology you prefer, and do a perfectly acceptable job of cleaning yourself off. Maybe, if I’ve been out in the garden for a couple of hours I will need something more substantial, but that’s rarely the case, and I stopped DIY changing the oil in my car decades ago.

Of course, at some point I do get a new bar. Either I look at the soap dish when I’m in the bathroom for another reason and realize the sliver is down to a nanogram in size and replace it, or I get into the shower and look at the sliver and decide to get out and drip my way down the hall to the linen closet and get a new bar. However, when I do, I hear my mother’s voice in my head: “Gonna throw that out, eh? Must be nice to be rich.”

And, she’s not wrong, I coulda used it one more time.