4 of 490: Cold Showers
Dear Lord, please forgive Skylar for using all the hot water, forcing me to take short cold showers that don’t result in proper hygiene.
Ever since I spent a year in a travel trailer, taking showers is never routine business. Every shower I take is accompanied with extreme gratitude and, yes, audible jubilation…
“Woo Hoo! There’s hot water coming out of that pipe in the wall. Hallelujah!”
I’ve developed a fiery passion for hot showers, resulting in taking upwards of 3 per day. This has very little to do with hygiene, although hygienically speaking, it doesn’t disappoint my wife Ruby. Instead, it has everything to do with a profound appreciation for this modern miracle. I appreciate a hot shower the way Oliver Twist would have appreciated a can of Campbell soup…
…mmm…mmm…good.
On the shower scale I’ve experienced a broad range. On the left side of the scale, labeled “awful”, is the gym locker room communal shower, where one must fight for real estate around a shared nozzle tree. Here, you make a conscious effort to not make eye or skin contact with adjacent bathers. In the middle of the scale, labeled “pretty good”, are Las Vegas Hotel Suite showers. If you can avoid thinking about what has been done in that shower, you can enjoy steamy hot water out of two or three shower heads. But the best shower I ever had was in Park City, Utah. I had been skiing all day, and I returned to the rental cabin with that oh-so-familiar feeling of “I could really go for a hot shower right now.” A normal shower would have felt great. Little did I know I was about to take the best shower of my life.
The first thing I noticed was a thermometer on the rock tile wall. “Hmm. Could this be water temperature?” I thought to myself. “I’m not sure what my preferred water temperature is.” In most showers temperature is universally indicated by 2 overlapping lines of red and blue, stretching around the dial like an elongated ying yang symbol. Some showers will simply have the letter “H” on one side of the dial and the letter “C” on the opposing side. In either case, water temperature is a guessing game. One must adjust the dial incrementally until the perfect temperature is reached. In the case of alpha character representation, it’s a real guessing game if you don’t speak English.
“And that’s when I boiled my junk off,” a Korean told his disappointed girlfriend upon returning home from the states. “I don’t know what these ‘C’ and ‘H’ letters mean.”
Curious, I increased the thermometer to 100. Not wanting to end up like the poor Korean with no junk and an ex-girlfriend, I covered my privates and pushed the start button. Like most people with a healthy amount of common sense, I expected water to descend from the shower head above. But IQ be damned, a steamy vapor began billowing near my feet like an overdue tea kettle. In no time at all the entire shower stall was filled with a humid mist reminiscent of a Florida day in August…
…only this felt clean.
I turned on the regular shower water, and the temperature inside slowly reached 100 degrees.
This kind of indulgence is not common, usually reserved for kings, emperors, or the Kardashian sisters. And yet here I was, enjoying what may be the best shower in the entire world. While breathing in mouthfuls of steamy air, letting the strenuous day of skiing melt from my pores, I considered, as I so often do, the history of mankind.
I realized entire wars have been waged for spoils much less than a steam shower. In 1838 Mexico and France went to war over pastry. Indeed, the French make good croissants, but if Taco Bell is any indication, the Mexicans still had plenty of creative ways to use a tortilla. And had I been alive during the 1977 New York blackout, while other miscreants were looting televisions and DJ equipment, knowing what I know now, I would have attempted to loot a steam shower.
I stayed in that world’s best shower until my skin was as wrinkly as Mick Jagger, which is a really long time…
…if you’ve seen a recent photo of Mick Jagger, that is.
Comparatively, the shower in my current house is average. But still, every time I open the curtain and step into the tub basin, I get a small feeling of gratitude when I turn it on. It’s a deep feeling of thanks that is certainly not unfounded.
Before the travel trailer I used to be like any other punk kid, taking showers for granted, sometimes even complaining I had to take one…
…Like a college graduate with a philosophy degree, I felt entitled.
But then we moved into a travel trailer, instantly I was jolted out of my self-important state. My haughtiness took a nose dive down to earth, a cruel earth where hot showers don’t grow on trees…
…and where cruel brothers steal your game boy.
The other day someone asked, “I have just one question about your time at Anderson Camp.”
“Only one question?” I thought, happy that this person had thus far lived such a naive life of comfort. Seriously, I have thousands of questions haunting me every day, filling my brain to near incapacitation.
The reader continued with his question, “How did you shower in the travel trailer?”
This is an astute observation and valid question. How does one shower in a 20-foot travel trailer? Where is a shower located when you only have 20 feet to work with? Does the refrigerator double as a bathing unit?
When you stepped into the 20-foot prowler, you found yourself in a small living room. But “living” is not the right word for this room because there was no real living going on, just survival. It was a small survival room. To the right was the kitchen area, dining table, sink, and refrigerator.
To the left was the bedroom. In this case “bed” is the perfect word for this room because, literally, the only thing that fit in this room was a bed. Between the survival room and the bedroom was a gap for the bathroom. This area felt as though it was a mere afterthought.
“I Just finished up the designs for the 20-foot prowler, boss” said some underachieving architect who had flunked out of real architect school.
“Where is the bathroom?” said his boss.
“%#*!,” said the underachieving architect. “Well, I guess we’ll have to cram it in right here.”
The shower in the 20-foot prowler could not have been more pathetic. Going into my eighth grade year, I was only 5'3". Still, the shower head was so low that it was only useful if you needed to rinse out your belly button cavity. The actual shower area was so crammed that in order to rinse the shampoo from your hair, you had to twist and knot your body in forms only reasonable for a professional contortionist, gumby…
…or a professional contortionist in a Gumby costume.
In addition to the miniscule, Barbie-like size of the shower, the water pressure of the travel trailer was feeble at best. Scientifically it could only be classified as a dribble. On a good day you might classify it as a trickle. So not only did you have to dislocate a few joints to rinse all your body parts, you then had to have incredible strength and endurance to hold the position while liquid dripped down like a Chinese water torture. After watching a Cirque Du Soleil show, I’ve often wondered if their show prep involves showering in a 20-foot travel trailer. With the vast training I’ve done, circus entertainer may have been a career I overlooked.
“Can you fit inside a carry-on suitcase?” was never a question on the job assessment surveys.
As if all this wasn’t bad enough already, I haven’t even mentioned the worst part…
…the water heater.
If the average water heater at Home Depot holds 50 gallons, then the water heater capacity in the Prowler was about 2 tablespoons. In our old home a common phrase was, “Skylar, you’re hogging all the hot water. Get out now or I’ll tell Danny you wet the bed until you were 12.” Well, in the travel trailer, threatening words were meaningless. If you weren’t the first person to shower for the day…
…don’t bother.
So for the better part of a year, I either had showers that started lukewarm but ended cold. Or I had showers that started cold but ended with me nearly getting hypothermia.
I’m not sure anyone understands the psychological impact of starting every day with a crappy shower for nearly a year. The repetitive coldness of such showers start to turns your heart a little icy. It might take decades to any sense of warmth. So before you pass any judgement on me, remember that you’ve never walked a mile in my shoes, or in this case…
…bathed a year in my shower.
