My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places

Cheaper Than Thou

My husband, Ed, once called me the cheapest person in the world. I believe this was around the time he discovered that every night I remove my eyeliner with the end of a Q-tip and then set it aside to use the other end the following night. Ed was appalled. “Do you rinse and reuse your dental floss too?”

I gave him a look of utmost scorn, though it’s possible he saw through the scorn to the little light shining behind it, the light that said, “Wow, great idea!”

I know for a fact that I’m not the cheapest person in the world, because it’s a matter of record—Guinness record, to be specific—that the world’s greatest miser was Hetty Green. And do you know what the Guinness Book of World Records cited as evidence of her miserliness? She saved scraps of soap.

And who in our house saves scraps of soap? That would be Ed. When the bar of soap gets so tiny that you can’t wash without it crumbling like feta cheese inside your underarms, Ed will take the delicate sliver and fuse it onto the new bar of soap. I can recall the first time I saw this. It was touching in a way, the little infant soap clinging to its mother’s back like a baby monkey. The charm wore off over the course of umpteen showers during which the sliver would repeatedly dislodge from its host, forcing me to stand under the water for five minutes at a time fusing it back into place, wasting precious pennies’ worth of water—pennies that could be put to good use buying six months’ worth of Q-tips.

In Ed’s case, it’s hereditary. I will always remember the sight of Ed’s dad, Bill, eating a salad dressed from a gallon vat of dressing purchased at Costco.

He had bought the largest size because it was the most economical, but as it turned out, he hated the taste of it. Ed encouraged him to throw it away.

“I bought it,” he said, chewing miserably, “and I’m going to finish it.” This was in 1997. Every time we visit, we check in the refrigerator for the Dressing of Bill’s Discontent, marking off his progress in half-inch increments.

We figure his sentence will be up around 2030. We’re hoping that he lives that long, first because we love him dearly, and second, because if he doesn’t, that means Ed and I will have to bring it home and finish it. Otherwise it would be a waste of perfectly good dressing, “perfectly good” here meaning “not immediately life-threatening.” And when the bottom of the evil vat is finally in sight, one of us will turn it upside down, to be sure not a drop goes to waste. We had a honey jar upside down on the breakfast table for the better part of a decade. “Pass the YENOH,” Ed would say.

I’d be hard-pressed to say who’s more pathetic, Ed or me. We both make ourselves feel better by berating the other person. Ed takes great joy in reminding me of the time a car salesman told me I was the first person he’d ever met who ordered a car with NO extras. I, in turn, take great joy watching Ed rummage through his box of stray, salvaged screws in a predictably hopeless effort to find one that fits.

Yesterday Ed caught me using the Water Miser dishwasher option (I prefer the term Water Conservationist) even though there were dirty, greasy pots inside. I tried to explain that by adding a little extra soap, I could make up the lost cleansing power. Perhaps this might be a good use for those little slivers of bar soap. Ed told me I had a screw loose.

It’s possible he’s right. And when it falls out, we know where to look for a replacement.