I have a shower mat. My girlfriend laughs at me for it. It makes me look like an 80-year-old man. Why would a perfectly healthy guy put a rubber mat down every time he showers? The answer is that I slipped more than once — and I don’t intend to fall.
There’s a lot of stuff you can land on in my bathroom. The sink. The toilet. The floor. None of it will provide a soft landing, and if you’re unlucky, you’ll make the “dumbest ways to die” list the next day.
My grandpa is an 80-year-old man. In fact, he’ll turn 82 in a few days. Not too long ago, he did fall in the shower, and the bruises were neither fun to look at nor quick to heal. It was the last warning shot I needed — and so I bought a shower mat.
Life pulls the rug from under our feet often enough. We don’t always get fair warning, let alone multiple ones, and yet when we do, we usually ignore them. We keep barreling down the slope on our skateboard, thinking we’re invincible. A helmet? Knee pads? Those are for suckers! Sure they are. Until the wheels catch a tiny stone, and we get the flying lesson we never asked for.
If fortune is generous enough to let you slip before you fall, don’t take it for granted. Heed that warning. Buy the anti-slip socks, the helmet, or the flowers that let your girlfriend know you love her. Life has given you a chance to prevent unnecessary disaster, and it is your duty to take it — if not to protect others, then at least to save your own neck.
Slip once, buy a shower mat, phew. Slip twice, fall, that’s on you. May you never hit the dirt.