The Shower

7-7

Every place I go is a new bathroom adventure. I’m never quite sure what to expect. But this week, I was utterly amazed. The bathroom is spacious and clean, complete with a toilet that flushes and furnished with toilet paper! The real excitement came in the shower though. First, it’s quite a lot more like what you probably envision as a shower. Most of the places I have been so far have had a fairly fuzzy distinction between where the bathroom ends and where the shower begins. Some have had no distinction at all. Not one has had a shower curtain.

Until this week! Not only is there a curtain, but there’s like a shower stall! A whole little space designated only for showering, curtained off from the rest of the world. Incredible. But it gets better. My initial bathroom survey revealed this little shower stall to contain a very interesting piece of equipment. On the wall there is a box that looks straight out of 1982. A silver hose goes into the box from the wall. Another comes out and goes to (drum roll please) a shower head! And there’s a knob on the box with 4 settings: off, low, med, and high. I was in utter disbelief. A warm shower? I could not believe it! In fact, I did not let myself believe it, especially considering the facts that the box did appear to be a few decades past its prime and the shower was still equipped with the standard faucet-bucket-scoop combo I have become so familiar with.

The next morning, eager with anticipation, I read the instructions on the box. “Turn on water. Turn knob to desired temperature. Monitor temperature. Turn knob to off. Turn off water.” Simple. Alas, when I turned on the water, my initial hesitance about the box proved true. Only a small stream came out of the shower head. A trickle, really. So much for a real shower. But I figured, why not see what this thing can do, and I cranked it up to “med”. Sure enough, within 30 seconds that trickle was toasty. And by positioning my bucket underneath the trickle, I could effectively get myself a few extra degrees. And those degrees make all the difference. We’re talking going from holding a scoop over my head for 15 seconds dreading the icy chill to being comfortable for the first time all summer! It may have only been lukewarm, but lukewarm is way better than brisk.

Morning number two came, and I thought, this is great, but I can make it better. I’m sure I can achieve more than lukewarm. Part of the problem is that a small trickle of hot water is taking on a 5 gallon bucket of cold water. So I figured, why not turn on the hot water before my shower and give the whole deal a minute to warm up some. So I turned on the trickle, cranked the knob to medium again, and went about my other bathroom duties, proud of my American ingenuity. But as I’m taking care of business, I hear what sounds like a very loud alarm clock going off. Whose alarm is going off and why haven’t I heard it before? As I head for the shower I realize suddenly, that it’s coming from the box! And inside the shower the noise goes from “very loud” to “deafening”. And I go from half awake to instantly alert. A light on the box labeled “alarm” is blinking. I turn the knob to “off”. Nothing happens. The alarm is still ringing! I try every other setting and then turn it off again, to no avail. At this point, I am sure I have woken up the rest of the house. A frantic survey of the box reveals it to be plugged in to the ceiling, far overhead. I’m in the shower, everything is wet, and I have nothing to stand on. I realize the shower bucket is my only hope, but it’s holding the few gallons of water I’ve managed to heat from “frigid” to “cool”. So instead of turning it over for stability, I decide to risk standing on the edges. As I climb up and grab a live electric wire, wet, holding on to an old shower rod, I think to myself this is a dumb way to die. I manage to unplug the box, and the alarm mercifully fades out. I think maybe I can plug it back in, but as soon as I do the deafening noise fills the shower again. No such luck. The first few scoops are marginally warmer than normal, but after that, it’s back to cold. I do kind of wonder what happens if you turn it on high though…