Jar Etiquette is a Thing - Are you a Skimmer or a Gouger?

When my Dad was struggling with dementia, he received home support services. One of the tasks they helped him with was making him breakfast. He liked to have peanut butter on crisp bread. Which seems fairly innocuous but... after the home support worker had left, Dad phoned me to come down.

They had done something quite horrible, at least for him. He opened up his peanut butter jar and showed me how they had gouged the peanut butter with the knife. They just dug into the peanut butter and the gouges were deeply disturbing to my Dad. He was very much a Skimmer, not a Gouger. He would take his knife and skim the peanut butter surface. Very neat and tidy.

At the time, overwhelmed as I was, I thought this was a very minor issue. But for my Dad, it was major.

Yes. Well... enter the honey pot. 100% Canadian - pure creamed honey. This is the hard honey, not the liquid stuff. And my partner and I both use the honey. It used to be that it was just me who used the honey, for my oatmeal. But then I shifted to berries in my oatmeal and now my partner is the one who is using it more.

The other day, I opened up the honey because we had run out of frozen berries for my oatmeal. And I found this... Ahhhhhhhhh!!!! Quel scandale!!! It's a travesty!! The honey has been... **gasp**... deeply gouged!!

And that was when I realized... I am a Skimmer, not a Gouger. At least not when it comes to creamed honey. See... you take your spoon and you skim the surface, all the way down to the bottom. Although, as you get closer to the bottom, it's hard to get the right angle for skimming but... you get my point.

For me... and this is just for me... skimming is much easier. When you're trying to gouge that deep, the spoon gets stuck in the honey and it's hard to pull it out. Skimming is just easier... and neater and... well... better! Hmph.

Naturally, I skimmed the internet, looking to see if this "Skimmer vs Gouger" was a "thing". And the conclusion is... maybe.

I found this lovely image of a jar of peanut butter gouged all the way to the bottom, but only on half of the jar. Which is just strange until I realized... it was connected to a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon! 

Image from - https://imgur.com/W6O3AcY

You see... it appears that peanut butter (and honey) jar etiquette is a real thing. And when a household shares a jar of peanut butter (or honey), different perspectives and preferences often collide.

The cartoon reads like this:

• Panel 1 - Calvin exclaims in shock "AAUGH! The peanut butter is ruined!!"
• Panel 2 - Calvin grumbles: "You're supposed to scoop one half straight down and then dig out the other side from the bottom. So part of the top remains undisturbed until the very end."
• Panel 3 - Perplexed Mom "What on earth for?"  Calvin on his soapbox: "It's a ritual. You want to keep the top of the peanut butter smooth."
• Panel 4 - Irked Mom: "Maybe you should make your own sandwiches." Philosophical Calvin: "If you can't control your peanut butter, you can't expect to control your life. Did you cut the bread diagonally?"

Words of wisdom. Perhaps that's a s simple as it gets. If you can't control your peanut butter (or your honey), how can you ever hope to control your life.

Perhaps that's all we're really trying to do, just control our honey jar, so that we have a semblance of control over something. Although, I will have to check with my partner if the honey gouging is really designed to dig out the one side and then mine out the bottom of the other side. I rather doubt it. I think it was just random gouging. No desire to control life there.

I would agree with Calvin that the top of the honey needs to be smooth... hence my skimming technique!

Is there, however, a deeper philosophical meaning to this. Are Skimmers too shallow? Do we hesitate to sip deeply from the cup of life (or the honey jar of life)? Are Gougers deep thinkers? Do they dive deep into live and just splash around with glee, with no thought to order and neatness? I wonder...

I also wonder... are there other Skimmers or Gougers out there? Or is this just our household? And Calvin's household?