My Week 139: I Hate Showers

I Hate Showers

I’m a bather. I always have been, since the time I was young. I have fond memories of many bathtubs—the blue tub from my childhood, the long tub in our first apartment (from whose vantage I was fortunate enough to see a bat emerge from a hole in the ceiling), the deep tub that we bathed K in every night and in which there were more bathtub toys than child, and the current clawfoot tub in my ensuite bathroom that I’ve been lucky enough to have for over a decade. Last weekend, Ken took me away to an inn, and the room had a giant two-person Jacuzzi tub. It was amazing, and I grudgingly let him join me and then laughed as he kept squealing “So hot! So hot! How do you stand it?!” as he lowered himself slowly into the water. I just watched, bemused, because, like a smart lobster, I had gotten in early in the filling process and then turned the heat up so that I could acclimatize to it. He was like the angry lobster that gets plunged into the boiling water and then poisons everyone. OK, I know that PEOPLE do that to lobsters, and it’s not nice, but you get the analogy.

Anyway, directly opposing my love for bathing is my absolute f*cking loathing for showers. But why am I ranting about showers? Because in my new condo, I have to use one. Every goddamn day. I had originally planned to take the smaller bedroom and have the separate bathroom with the bathtub. That way, my roommate could have the larger room with the ensuite shower. Unfortunately, and somewhat tragically, my bed was too large for the second bedroom. I was faced with a terrible choice—give up the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept in (even the one at home that Ken and I share pales in comparison), or take the larger room, with the ridiculous shower unit. And I say ridiculous on TOP of evil, because the shower stall is the same length as a bathtub stall, and it even has a f*cking faucet. Who in their right mind has the opportunity and space for a proper bathtub but goes, “I’ll just put in a double sized shower because who wouldn’t love THAT?” NOBODY, that’s who. Ultimately I chose a good night’s sleep over the bathtub on the grounds that I could “get used to it”.

But I can’t because this shower, it hates me as much as I hate it. This is how the stupid thing works—you turn on the water at the tap half-way up the wall, then you have to stand UNDER the showerhead to push down the plunger on the faucet down by the floor to start the shower part going. There are two shower heads—a hand-held one, and a wall one, and they’re controlled by another plunger on the wall shower head. There is no way in hell that I’m NOT getting soaked at any point in this exercise. In fact, the other day, I wanted to use the handheld shower to just wash my hair (a process that involves me contorting and bending at the waist to avoid getting my pajamas wet, even though no matter what I do, my cuffs and my feet still get soaked), but when I pushed down the plunger, the wall head burst into life and soaked the sh*t out of me. I actually screamed, both in shock and anger. The universe snickered.

But there are other reasons why showers are the worst thing ever:

1) Showers are creatures of evil. They were invented by someone who thought, “Mwah haha! How can I make people miserable and uncomfortable while they are trying to soap up and rinse parts of their body they can’t see?! I know—how about making them stand under stinging, randomly placed pricks of water? And to make it even better, the temperature of the water will fluctuate between ice-cold and scalding hot whenever someone else flushes the toilet. This is perfect!! Mwah haha!” Screw you, shower-inventor and your malevolent plans. Also, the other reason you can tell that showers are evil is that no one EVER baptised an adult by making them stand under a bucket of water. No, it’s total immersion for the healthy soul, people. Yes, I know babies have water sprinkled on their heads, and this is why babies HATE showers. Well, sensible babies, anyway.

2) Showers are terrible for the visually-impaired. I hate showers now, after my laser eye surgery, because they’re devil-spawn, but originally, I hated showers because I was almost legally blind. I couldn’t wear contact lenses while I was showering because the force of the water running down my face would knock them out and send them down the drain. If I DIDN’T wear contact lenses, I couldn’t see ANYTHING, including what I was using to wash my hair. In fact, once at a hotel, I reached out and instead of the tiny conditioner bottle, I grabbed the body lotion (because when you’re blind as a bat, the words ‘conditioner’ and ‘body lotion’ are pretty much identical) and slathered it all over my hair, and let me tell you, that sh*t was hard to get out. And I couldn’t wear glasses, because the other stupid thing that a shower does is…

3) Showers create steam. So on top of having to suffer through the torment of hot water, cold air, and then groping for your towel while water is dripping down your face and into your ears, you have to claw through clouds of fog to find a place to sit down and dry your feet. And the only place is the toilet. So there you are, sitting on the plastic toilet seat, trying to dry yourself off, shivering from the cold, and wondering what you did to deserve this misery. Bathtubs, of course, have a ledge which is perfectly designed to perch on while you towel off, still all warm and toasty inside from being immersed in glorious water.

4) Showers are noisy. How am I supposed to relax at the end of the day with the thunderous sound of water in my ears? Loud noises stress me out terribly, but at least with the bath, I can run it with the door shut, then get in and enjoy the quiet solitude. I don’t even let the water run out until I’m completely finished, just to preserve the sense of calm. Unlike a shower, where you go from the cacophony of the water to the chaos of the shower fan. It’s like some kind of medieval witch torture scenario—you’re naked, cold, half-drowned, and the mob/ceiling vent fan is screaming at you but you can’t see them through all the fog. Also, when you’re in the shower, with all the noise and the shower curtain obscuring your vision, you have NO IDEA if a serial killer is in your bathroom. I learned this from “Psycho” and I’ve never forgotten it.

5) Showers take away my autonomy. I like to CHOOSE what parts of me get wet. (And if, right now, you’re all like, “Ooh—that’s what SHE said,” then you’re obviously a shower person.)

As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing better than soaking in a tub full of hot water to make you feel clean and shiny. Of course, there are people who don’t understand this. In fact, I was complaining to Ken about it just the other day:

Me: I hate showers. I’m so happy I’m home, and I can finally have a bath.
Ken: I don’t understand how you enjoy sitting in your own dirty water. It’s like swimming in a cesspool.
Me: What?! How the hell is it a “cesspool”? What do you think I DO all day? I work in an office. I’m not a f*cking mud wrestler! I don’t even sweat! How insulting.
Ken: I’d rather have a shower.
Me: Philistine.

And now, I’m done writing. Time for a bath.

 

32 thoughts on “My Week 139: I Hate Showers”

  1. I concur. If I have put off bathing for too many days & my hair is “dirty” (enough to make my bath water a “cesspool”), then I’ll wash it first, in a *sigh* shower, but as soon as that water’s running clear, I’ll stopper it & turn off the showerhead.

    I love a nice hot soak, with bath and essential oils for aromatherapy… and a bottle of wine nearby… and my Twitter tribe in my phone. No better bedtime prep.

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  3. I totally feel your pain. I haven’t had a bath tub in my apts in quite some time. I do enjoy a good soak. But now I am stuck with shower stalls so small my arms hit the sides when I scrub. Sad.

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  6. I once stayed at a rustic inn where the shower head was at the four foot mark. “Why is that?” I asked the inn owner. “Because my mother is four feet tall.”

    I happen to love showers. I get some of my best ideas in running water. Although I love bathtubs, too. Sadly, I don’t have one.

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    • I can’t think in the shower–I’m too busy trying not to swear profusely as the water gets in my eyes and ears! Then again, I don’t think much in the bath either–I do my best thinking in bed:-)

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  7. It’s been years since I took a bath. Showers are quicker and that’s what matters when I’m getting ready for work in the morning, but faster isn’t always better. Douglas Adams would take a bath whenever he felt bad. No one ever took a shower to feel better.
    At one particularly low point he was taking nine baths a day.
    I will however say that “stinging, randomly placed pricks of water” would be a great name for a rock band.

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  9. I don’t mind showers, and usually take them in order to get “clean.” But I LOVE baths. Love em. I also have a hot tub, and there’s a rare day that goes by and I haven’t spent time reading in one or the other.

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  10. While I don’t share your universal hatred of showers, I have been the unlucky user of some pretty awful ones. In grad school in England my tiny locker-sized bathroom essentially WAS the shower. Okay, so there was a technically curtain to separate the showering portion of the bathroom from the everything else portion, but I assume it was mostly there for decorative purposes as it did absolutely nothing to stop the entire room from getting soaked to the brim every time I wanted to get clean.

    We weren’t allowed to leave our bathroom doors open to vent the steam, either, because there was a chance that could set off the fire alarms. And I swear no matter how speedily I lathered and rinsed, by the end the ambient moisture in the room was so thick that a fog horn blast or two wouldn’t have gone amiss in helping me navigate my way back out.

    Of course, it wasn’t until _after_ my first attempt at bathing in the wretched space that I realized not removing my brand new roll of bathroom tissue from its hook and placing it safely outside would turn out to be a soggy, tragic 2-ply mistake.

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    • My sister-in-law lived overseas for a while and her bathroom was also her shower–there was a drain in the middle of the floor. I guess she must have been toilet paper-savvy because I don’t remember that being an issue. Or maybe the whole room was one big bidet as well…

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  11. Ooh, bathtubs ARE the best. I love the calm and the silence and the warm water. Sadly I hardly have the chance to use one T^T.
    I guess I’m used to showers now, what is sad, but I like the running water.
    One of my number one priorities for future apt hunting is to find a place that have a bathtub.
    Though I believe I would totally forget about living given the chance to spend hours bathing.
    Oh well, life priorities

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  12. Ha! Love this! I’m a bathtub person too. I temember finally for the first time in a long while getting a night away with my husband at a fancy hotel and there was a SHOWER!!! I tried so hard to not be upset. Who thinks to ask : “are there bathtubs?”‘when making a hotel reservation. I do now!!! Love your blog!

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