The Great Undeclared Soap Wars

An epic battle of a long, grueling war was lost this morning after weeks of careful planning and strategizing on my part.  The victor, in this latest struggle, was my lovely wife Zahava.

Anyone who shares a domicile with another person probably already has an idea where this is headed... but I'll spell it out for the rest of you.  But first a little background:

Once upon a time, back in my single days, I shared an apartment with a room-mate who, for reasons of avoiding 'lashon harah', will remain nameless.  This room-mate and I had agreed at the outset of our cohabitation to share equally in all expenses, including rent, utilities, cleaning supplies and food.

This last item proved far more difficult to divide equitably since, unlike the others (which were roughly monthly in nature), food was an ongoing – nearly daily - expense.  At some point we agreed that we would both do shopping, and at the end of the month, after totaling up our grocery receipts, whoever had laid out more cash would be reimbursed the difference by the other.

However it quickly became clear that while the money would eventually balance itself out… the actual 'pain in the a$$' factor of going shopping hadn't been sufficiently taken into account, and wasn't being divided equitably at all.

We quickly established a routine whereby I would come home from a gig at 1 AM with my mouth all set for a cold glass of Coke… only to find the fridge innocent of that dark, bubbly beverage.   I knew I'd bought some the previous morning, and sure enough… there on the counter stood the empty bottle.

This happened again and again with nearly everything I liked to eat and drink.  And it didn't make me feel better that at the end of the month my room-mate happily coughed up the huge disparity in our shopping bills.  I had, in essence, become his personal shopper (or mother… I'm not sure which).

So, we (I) introduced a new household rule.  Whoever finished something had to go out and replace it that very same day.

Sadly, while my room-mate may have been somewhat lazy, he wasn't stupid.  This new rule led to my opening the refrigerator and routinely being met by half a dozen bottles of various drinks with a half inch of cloudy back-wash on the bottom… or finding multiple Doritos bags in the cupboard, each with one lonely chip rattling around inside.

Time after time I was defeated by my wily opponent... and I never did manage to level the field before moving on and finding an apartment of my own.

What, you may be asking, does this have to do with soap, Zahava and some sort of war?

Well I'm glad you asked!  You see… much as you hope it would, this sort of childishness doesn't end when you toss out your last room-mate and finally get married.

As in most households, our shared master bathroom has a shower stall.  And in that shower is a soap dish.  Zahava and I have had an unspoken agreement for the past 16+ years that whoever uses up the soap will go to the closet and replace it with a fresh bar.

Simple, right?

Well, since we were married, my lovely bride and I have been in the grips of what I have come to think of as 'The Great Undeclared Soap Wars'.

Happily there is no lack of soap in our house.  But for some reason there seems to be some resistance to actually putting a new bar into the shower when the old one has eroded past the point of usefulness.

We're talking about the simple task of throwing out the limp sliver of old soap and getting out a new bar.  This is apparently so distasteful that whoever has to do it has come to look upon it as some sort of crushing defeat.

At some point, perhaps 8/10ths of the way through a bar of soap, the two of us inexplicably become raving lunatics.  We will continue to use the dwindling wafer-thin soap for shower after shower… smugly returning the now-transparent sliver to the soap dish in hopes that it will completely dissolve when the other person tries to use it.

Well, this morning I got into the shower… and made a tactical mistake.  I actually picked up the sliver of soap and, without actually estimating how much was left, attempted to use it.

If I had been thinking clearly I would have certainly gone to plan 'B' (i.e. using the bath gel, or even shampoo, instead of using up the itty-bitty bath soap).  But I was groggy and wasn't thinking clearly… and before I knew it I felt the little slip of soap completely dissolve without a trace.

Zahava was still snoozing happily in bed when the enormity of my loss hit me.  I was half tempted to yell for her to get up and bring me a new bar of soap from the cabinet.  But rules are rules… and whoever uses up the soap has to replace it.  So I stepped out of the shower onto the cold bathroom tiles and retrieved a new bar of soap… unwrapping it unhappily as I went.

There was little comfort in my return to the steamy-hot shower because I knew that as soon as Zahava went to take her shower she'd see the new bar of soap sitting there in the soap dish… and victory would be hers!

War is hell.