I guess I'm a little superstitious, although it took me a while to formulate this idea in my mind. It started out as an occurrence, but I didn't know the full impact of it. Then it became a full theory, and finally, an actual tried and true scientific principle!
The first time it happened was while I was in eighth grade. My Mom's uncle, Howard Cain, was contracted to build a shower in our basement. One shower in the house with two parents and seven children was not enough. My parents knew this very well. So in the spring of 1976, Uncle Howard built us an extra closet upstairs and also a three quarter bathroom in our basement. My Dad used to be the one to build things such as rooms in our basement, but he rarely had time anymore. He was so busy with Church activities, work, and being a good father, that it was easier to pay someone else to do the carpentry work.
So we had a new shower in the basement. It was a fiberglass enclosure built on a hard plastic base which was a good three or four inches from the floor. In the corner of this shower was a pre-formed rack where one could store such important items as scrubbers, shampoo, and of course, soap. One thing about it though, even with Howard's good construction skills, it wasn't as solidly built as our shower attached to the tub, upstairs. There were no tiled walls or porcelain soap holder. When you grabbed the soap from the pre-formed fiberglass soap holder, you immediately had the feeling of insecurity. You bobbled the soap and it fell. And when it fell, the heavy soap made a sickening “thud” on the hard plastic floor of the shower.
I tried not to pay much attention to this bad omen of the day. But after several times of this happening, it cast a gray cloud over me. Subsequently, I finished out eighth grade with low self esteem and I felt I was unpopular.
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