Words For My Enjoyment

Let me pose a very important hypothetical question to you.

Let’s say you were stranded on a desert island. Then two weeks later another guy also got stranded on the desert island with you. And there was only one coconut on one tree. And you’d already spent a few days trying to get down the coconut, and this new guy came along and he started trying to get the coconut too. Don’t you think that you, being the first coconut pursuer should get the coconut and the second guy who was late to the game should wait or go find his own coconut somewhere else?

If you agree, then the soap dispenser argument is right up your alley.

I was in a public bathroom the other day and I approached the sinks to wash my hands before leaving the space. There were two sinks, but only one soap dispenser. About ten seconds after I started wetting my hands at the sinks, another man approached the sinks and went right for the soap dispenser.

Me: “Uh, can you just hold up there a second, please?”
Him: “Hold up? Why? I’m just washing my hands.”
Me: “As am I. And I was here first. Which grants me usage of the soap dispenser first.”
Him: “You’re kidding, right?”

No. Not in the least.

It’s just common courtesy. If I’m the guy to the sinks first (or the coconut tree), then I should be allowed to get at the soap dispenser first. Not to mention, who knows what kind of a mess you’re going to make when you hit the bottom of that soap dispenser and spill goop all over the counter top and your hands and the dispenser’s lower plastic lip. Give a guy some respect for getting to the sink and the single dispenser first, and let him have his liquid soap day in the sun, so to speak. Don’t get all rushy-rush and cause a problem where there doesn’t have to be one.

So I blocked his way with my back, and sort of used my back to push him out of the way while I got to the soap dispenser first. Which he didn’t like. Which made him push me back, at which point he shoved his dirty, diseased hands towards the soap dispenser and did just what I feared he was going to do, thus my intent on hitting that soapy soap first…

He made a huge, gigantic, gross mess of it all.

Besides pushing him back and trying to wriggle my way to the dispenser first (as should have been the case based on my being at the sinks first), I wasn’t going to start a fist fight over the whole soap scuffle. But it brought up an important point in my mind — that if you’re first to the sinks and there’s only one soap dispenser, no matter how long it takes me…you should wait and out of common courtesy, allow me to hit that soap first.

If there’s two dispensers, go get ‘em tiger.

But if there’s only one, you know who gets to lather first.