Putting the case for showers

There are bath people and there are shower people. I freely admit to being a woman who prefers the latter. Don’t get me wrong; there are times when nothing but a quick soak will soothe the nerves. Though usually I’m in there no longer than five minutes, when the water starts to cool and my skin starts to crinkle, and my mind focuses on whatever germs and dirt I’m actually surrounded by, and I’m done. With showers you don’t have that problem. It all goes down the drain, almost instantaneously. This love affair with showers started early, in jest. As a child I would sneak into the bathroom with a bucket of cold water, climb up the bath beside the frosted glass cubicle, and pour the contents of the bucket on an unsuspecting sister inside. Her shrieks had me chuckling Bart Simpson-style. In high school a friend of mine, who I remain close with, once mentioned in passing that that past weekend she’d eaten a peach in the shower. That sentence has obviously remained with me since. What a fabulously decadent thing to do! Why hadn’t I thought of that! We were kindred spirits, it seemed. And while the experience didn’t quite live up to expectations––of course, I went out and bought a peach that very day. It was still green––it did teach me one must never rule out the heightened potential showers could give a humble culinary fare. Then I had to have my Appendix removed. Hardly the kind of thing a twelve year old wants to happen, but imagine my delight when, once on my feet again, my nurse told me I could go have a shower. “And take as long as you like!” she said kindly. Boy, did I. Twenty minutes! (When you live in a town which usually has water restrictions, and your house tried to obey them, twenty minutes was an eternity.) The facilities were your usual, Spartan, hospital fare, but for me they were luxurious. A chair!! Detachable nozzle! Wow! Chairs in showers were somewhat of a theme to come. At university, many of my male dormitory-mates often had competitions as to who could take the longest shower. In they took their own, plastic garden chairs, CD players, and god-knows what else and there they sat, talking and laughing with each other through the thick steam. I think the record was something like two hours, but by that point, for me, the joke had run from amusing to downright wasteful. There are the fads: shower sex? (No thanks…and don’t ask why). Two-man sized showers with his’n’hers bays? Twin shower heads? Then there are those new-fangled ones that drop the water from directly above, to resemble rain. Sounds fantastic; perhaps when I have more money. But for now I’ll have to make do with my own little innovation. I read in the shower. Yes, that’s right. The success rate of this really depends on the design of your shower. If you have a long shower recess, you can lie on your belly, let the water fall on your back while you’re just out of the splash-zone. Smaller showers can work in that often you can prop up the book just in front of you along the rungs of the door-track (so obviously glass-walled showers are an advantage). This is often a better option as you’re less likely to get cold, but you can also get more water in your eyes, thus making the effort redundant. Experimentation is they key. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t do this every day. I don’t even do it every month. It’s just that sometimes the shower is the only place I get some peace and time to yourself. So I utilise it to its fullest capacity. And there’s nothing wrong with that. What do you do in your shower?