Picture this: yours truly in the shower. Never mind! Don’t picture that. Banish that picture from your mind forever, and imagine this: a person is in the shower doing all their showerly business, which includes singing Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” with unparalleled verve when all of a sudden a step to the left sends imagined person veering across the shower tile like a novice skier down an ice-packed Mt. Everest.

The incident happened, of course, at the most climactic point of the whole Gaga rendition: the chorus of this marvelous song, “I’m on the right track, b!$*&es, I was born this way!” On this particular occasion, the words came out more like, “I’m on the right track bee-ahhhhhhhh-ches! Holy shiznit on a Ritz cracker! What in the hell was that?!”

It was soap.

A small, white, tiny, slithery piece of life-flashing-before-your-eyes suds-bar. Who would have known this small, insignificant, useless, (and more-than-likely hairy) piece of human deodorizer had the ability to send a Homo sapien careening in their birthday suit to a small spidery corner in the shower holding on to whatever that birthday suit provides as “Oh, shit!” handles?

Well, there I was; I mean there imagined person was crouching blindly (the shampoo hadn’t been fully washed out of their hair), and clutching the shower floor for dear life wondering if it would be wise to attempt standing up.

After the soap slid back toward the drain, and the adrenaline subsided, and the brain overthrew its hijackers, stand up the imagined person did.

They stood up, rinsed the shampoo out of their hair, opened their bloodshot eyes, and declared with re-empowered verve (and Shoulder shakes, spirit fingers, and a bend-and-snap with a grand finale of make it rain gestures): “I’m STILL on the right track, bee-ah-ches, I was born this way!”

When life throws you slippery showers (as it so often does) and you fall into that spidery corner clutching your metaphorical birthday suit, remember “we’re all born superstars.” So stand back up, rinse that soap out of your eyes, and declare with ever more vigor just how strong and amazing you are (and throw a few hair flips in too!).