Musings at Altitude

Many decades ago when I was in school, one of my math teachers asked this question on an exam:  “If you jumped off a building and are rapidly falling to the earth, do you mathematically ever hit the ground”?

As I worked hard with whatever formulas I could pull out of my pea sized brain back then, I quickly realized that it was irrelevant.  The undeniable carnage that would be left if the jump was from a great height or the broken bones that would occur from a shorter height told me that whether you hit mathematically or not, you most certainly felt some pain!  [Editor’s Note:  Many of you can imagine me working through the process of figuring out a constantly shrinking distance that never reaches zero…I think my brain is still fried from that one.]

This morning I was faced with a very similar dilemma.  For the last week, we’ve had a new shampoo bottle carefully positioned outside the shower for that inevitable day when the one currently being used ran out. 

A week ago, it was near empty.  Yesterday, it was still near empty, and after another shower, we finally threw the old one away and let the new one finally do its job.

That got me thinking.  In the same spirit as the math question above, “When you’re nearing the bottom of a shampoo bottle (or the last of a tube of toothpaste), does the shampoo (or the toothpaste) ever really run out”? 

I have to say adamantly, “NO”!

Some things most certainly hit “empty”, like a checking account when that last dollar is spent.  Or a gas tank when the engine stops (though you could argue there is most likely still some drops somewhere in the tank). 

But so many other things always seem to have that one last squeeze, or roll, or pump, or shake in it.

Many of us go all the way to that bitter end, desperately wanting that very last use of whatever product we may be using.

But yesterday, I gave up on both a bottle of shampoo and a tube of toothpaste.  Too much work to get one more day out of either the bottle or the tube!

And today I feel good!  New bottles and new tubes!  It’s a new day, and a new week!

Life is good!