Humor
Life Can Be Draining
My losing 2022 Erma Bombeck Writing Competition entry.
If this isn’t classic Erma Bombeck, I don’t know what is.
It’s a shame that society doesn’t value the skill required to balance one bottle on top of another bottle.
Draining every last drop of something from one bottle and putting it into another, fuller bottle seems like magic to some, obsession to others, “completely unnecessary” to still others. But it requires all the dedication and single-mindedness of a Jedi Knight.
Balancing one bottle on top of another bottle is a skill handed down from mother to daughter over the millennia. Anthropologists have found cave drawings of Neanderthals balancing shampoo bottles on top of one another to get every last drop.
People were living on a budget even in the Pleistocene. Neanderthal fathers could be heard yelling, “Who touched the thermostat?” while Neanderthal mothers entered a Zen state delicately balancing a dish soap bottle on top of another dish soap bottle with the precision of a brain surgeon operating on the Pope.
One false move and all is lost. Really, everyone should just leave the house and come back in a few days when the last of the lotion has glugged its way into…
