How To Soap is a degree course offered by a number of United States universities.

The course, brainchild of hand washing legend Martin Wadsworth, offers students the chance to learn everything there is to know about lathering and rinsing. Alongside these practical skills, the course also covers the selection of soap in the store, the transportation of the soap to your home, opening or unwrapping the soap, hard and soft waters and the soaper’s ultimatum: to foam or not to foam.

Many parents were initially unwilling to pay for their child to attend such a course, but fortunately demand trickled in through a small number of scholarships. The merits of the course were spread via social networking sites and before America’s universities knew it, they had a hotcake on their hands.

A number of top institutions are currently developing a Masters programme for the course.

According to the Merriam Webster online dictionary ‘Smothering’ is:

1: to overcome or kill with smoke or fumes
2 a: to kill by depriving of air b: to overcome or discomfit through or as if through lack of air c: to suppress (a fire) by excluding oxygen
3 a: to cause to smolder b: to suppress expression or knowledge of <smothered his rage> c: to stop or prevent the growth or activity of <smother a child with too much care> ; also : overwhelm d: to cover thickly : blanket <snow smothered the trails> e: to overcome or vanquish quickly or decisively4: to cook in a covered pan or pot with little liquid over low heat Source

However as good as the dictionary is it does not answer the widly asked question “How To Not Smother?”.

As smothering effectively involves inhibiting the ability for air to reach places that it needs to, for example your lungs, not smothering is simply a matter of making sure that there is still a way for air to reach it’s needed destination.

This could involve using a pillow with holes to only fake smother the desired target. or making sure that you use less sand than needed to extinguish (thus not smothering) an out of control fire.