The Soap Sliver

Are you guys a ‘bar’ soap user…or have you joined that group that uses liquid bath soap out of the bottle? I’m a bar soap guy, always have been and just can’t find the desire to change. If you’re a bar soap user, what do you do when you’re down to that last little slice, the one that you’re thinking, with the next good scrub, it’s going to break into little pieces?

Every time I’m in the shower and the soap is at that point, I tell myself to “get a new bar of soap when you’re out of the shower”. But, too often, by the time I’m out, dried, shaved, groomed and dressed…I’ve forgotten. And I don’t think about it again…until the next time I’ve stepped in the shower, gotten wet, reached for the soap and….dammit!

I remember as a little kid, my dad seemed to save every little sliver of soap. When I saw a new bar at the sink, that little sliver of the previous bar was sticking to the side of the new one. Dad was of the ‘Depression’ generation…you didn’t waste anything.

I don’t seem to have the ability to get that little sliver to stick to the new bar like dad did. I don’t know if he had a trick or the soap bars today are different than those from 60 years ago. Anyway, I usually end up tossing that little sliver in the wastebasket…and I think of dad…and I feel a little guilty.

For those of you who are saying…there are people who still use bar soap? The earliest recorded evidence of the production of soap-like materials dates back to around 2800 BC in ancient Babylon. Liquid soap was not invented until the nineteenth century, in 1865, when William Shepphard patented a liquid version of soap. In 1898, B.J. Johnson developed a soap derived from palm and olive oils; his company, the B.J. Johnson Soap Company, introduced Palmolive brand soap that same year. This new brand of soap became popular rapidly, and to such a degree that B.J. Johnson Soap Company changed its name to Palmolive.

Liquid soaps are for dishes…and laundry…and the floors! Not for bathing. So do I still use bar soap? Yes, yes I do. I’m keeping a 5000 year tradition alive. Get over it.
 
REMEMBER:

If you expect the world to be fair with you because you are fair, you’re fooling yourself. That’s like expecting the lion not to eat you because you didn’t eat him.

Be talkin' to ya.

Dan