Encounters with Stupidity

When my previous roommate went back to Japan, she left a bar of soap, among other things. The other things included arcane textbooks, a coverless body pillow, a variety of size zero women's clothes, and a semi-broken AM/FM/cassette player. Most of this stuff found its way to the local Goodwill, but the soap ended up in the soap tray next to my bathroom sink. I wash my hands frequently, but I prefer liquid soap, so the bar of soap languished in its sink-side tray, unused. Gradually, though, I began my Whole Life Consolidation Effort (WLCE). This partly entailed the development of a compulsive need to use up extras of anything. For example, before the WLCE, my toiletries cabinet contained a dozen-odd partially used bottles of hair conditioner. In the WLCE era, I am working my way through these bottles, one by one. Each time I empty a bottle I carry it with pride and joy to the recycle bin, relishing the moment I toss the bottle through the air and into the recepticle. Later I get to savor my consolidation effort yet again as I carry the bin out to the large recycle bin outside. When the recycle truck comes very early Thursday morning, I wake up momentarily and peek out the front window to watch the big metal arm lift the bin high over the truck and my various recyclables cascade through the air... for just a moment, I think I catch a glimpse of the conditioner bottle. Now that the waste is off my property, I feel less burdened. One more bit of junk and clutter is gone, permanently, from my life. I can almost feel my house rebounding isostatically, like the upper Midwest, Canada and Scandanavia after the glaciers melted away.

In this spirit of cleansing, one day I hefted the abondoned bar of soap. It was taking up part of the volume of my bathroom. Something needed to be done. I turned on the water in the sink and frothed up my hands with the bar of soap. It gave off a pleasant fragrance. Soon, I was totally ignoring the liquid hand soap, and using the bar soap almost exclusively. I expected the job of soap dissolution to last about a month. This job didn't require a trip to the recycle bin -- the dissolved soap simply washed down the drain, removing mass and a volume of material from my house with almost no extra effort on my part. Weeks went by, and the soap bar was maintaining its size rather well, despite my extravagent and extended soap-frothing sessions. I washed my hands four or five times a day, at least, and each time I lathered up throughly. Still, the soap persisted, in line with its stoic and inanimate nature. It occurs to me that liquid soap is actually diluted soap, like many products these days. Or maybe we use about ten times more liquid soap than we truly need. A bar of soap is soap in its essence, its most condensed form. A bar of soap is the neutron star of the hand-cleaning-product galaxy.

Seasons came and went, I left the country a time or two, and went up to Seattle. I washed my hands, and my current roommate and his guests probably did as well. Still, the bar persists. Even to this day. In Cyprus I foolishly acquired a replacement bar, breaking my new cardinal rule: never acquire anything. In my blind optimism and faith in dissolution rates, I figured the bar of soap waiting back in Arizona had perhaps a week or two remaining. Wrong! The replacement bar waits patiently behind the current reigning bar. It's time is coming to an end. I will celebrate the moment I rinse the last soapy molecules down the drain, and gently lift the replacement bar into the soap tray. At that time, I will be in possession of ONE bar of soap, the perfect number of most things.