Sometimes It's The Little Things
Sometimes it's the little things that make you remember a person just as much as the big "ah" moments. Pepsi had a way of being fascinated by little gadgets that nobody else seemed to appreciate or understand how useful they might be. She gave us one of those and for a while I, too, didn't appreciate how useful it is. I'm talking about a spectacularly simple device. In fact it's so simple that it's hard to describe it. It's a white slightly concave plastic plate that has one straight side and a curved one such that it looks sort of like a half moon, but cut off a bit above the half line. Near the top of the curved edge, and in the center of it there is a hole. I would think for hanging it up. The business part of this great gadget is a slit that runs parallel to and just above the straight edge. The slit is about one and a half inches long, leaving about one half inch of solid plate on each side. The slit is at most one eighth inch wide. The long sides of the slit are curved up at the edges so that it looks like whatever flat object you squeeze through the slit will be able to go only one way, namely in the direction of the curved edges, and if you wanted to pull it back out, it would be grabbed by these edges and retained.
I'm sure you'll never guess what this gadget is used for. Well, it's used as a peace keeper. It keeps peace between those who squeeze toothpaste tubes at the bottom -- that's me -- and those who compulsively squeeze them at the top -- that's Toni. Yes, that gadget is used to keep toothpaste from being squeezed back toward the bottom of the tube.
It works like this. Once you have used enough of the toothpaste to make a flat section at the bottom of the tube you force that flat section through the slit of Pepi's peace keeper and you pull the tube through it. The slit is so narrow that it just fits the empty tube. So as you push the peace keeper toward the top of the tube you squeeze any remaining toothpaste ahead of the edge of the slit until the toothpaste tightly fills the upper part of the tube. To make sure it stays there you insert the tube into the slit so that the curved edges point toward the empty part. That way no matter how hard the top squeezer squeezes, Pepsi's peace keeper will not slide back down because the curved edges hold it firmly in place and that way no toothpaste can be squeezed back into the empty bottom.
From then on you simply keep advancing Pepsi's peace keeper as you use up the toothpaste and that way it really doesn't matter whether you squeeze near the bottom (just above the peace keeper) or near the top (near the cap), because the tube will always be tightly filled with toothpaste, all the way to the last squeeze.
To see the utility of such a simple device and to bother to buy it, and then to give it as a gift indicates to me that Pepsi had a very special mind, I would say the mind of a genius. And she let's me know about her genius every time I squeeze on that tube of toothpaste that is stuck in Pepsi's peace keeper. That's twice a day. At least.
Love you, Pepsi. Gerhard.
To see a picture of Pepsi's "Peace Keeper" click here: PK
