Ammo Grrrll confesses that she is, so to speak, SHOWERED WITH HATRED. She writes:
I have been reluctant to take on today’s subject for some time, so controversial is its nature. Viral shaming, death threats, rampant mockery may well follow. But inspired by the profligate flinging about of the word “brave” to describe every woman who has a lurid, decades-old tale of being touched once by another human being, I have decided to come clean.
Am I talking about abortion, sexual assault, or moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem? No. I am speaking, of course, of Bath People (me and all right-thinking Americans) vs. Shower People (Mr. AG, every man I know, and commies, Literal Nazis, and Harvey Weinstein).
Having traveled for 30 years for work — and still, after 8 years of retirement not yet completely out of tiny soap – it came as a great shock to me to check into a Marriott Courtyard to discover that my room had NO BATHTUB!!
I’m surprised it still had a toilet. Soon that will be gone to make room for more places to plug in chargers for electronics.
Evidently, people over 60 fear bathtubs and people younger than 60 have such a marked preference for showers that hotels have stopped even bothering to offer bathtubs.
The home I grew up in had only one bathroom for five people. My sister got the first 2 hours in the morning and the other 4 of us split the remaining 17 minutes. The bathroom had only a bathtub and no shower and I loved bathing from early childhood on. What Kramer on Seinfeld slanderously described as “marinating in your own filth.”
The first time I ever ran a full tub was my first day at college. Sadly, our dear late Mama had grown up on a farm in drought-ridden South Dakota in the Depression. All water had to be hauled from a spring in cream cans. Her parents and sisters all bathed in the same metal tub on Saturday night. She hated “wasting” water (or anything else…) When we were kids, she allowed us about two inches of water, and, since the bathroom wall abutted the kitchen wall, she could hear if we tried to sneak more water and would bang on the wall, bless her heart. I would bathe in one inch of water for life if I could have her back for one week…
But it’s not like I have never seen a shower. I saw one in the Hitchcock movie Psycho, and it made a definite and lasting impression on me.
Our home in Arizona has three full bathrooms and one half-bath off the living room area for guests who have only come to eat, drink and be merry, and have courteously attended to their hygiene needs before arriving. So we have three showers and three bathtubs.
The bathtub in the Master Bath is a very deep, short, kind of wide-oval affair that Mr. AG once referred to as “a Susan-shaped tub” and yet he still lives and breathes, though slightly less well. Anyway, one can run a lovely hot bath, submerge every part in it up to one’s neck, and float in an Epsom-salt sea of tranquility. When the skin on one’s fingers resembles Craisins only not quite as red, one can run the washcloth briefly around the “ring” and then hustle right out into a big, soft, warmed towel or terrycloth robe.
Showers? A totally different experience. I happen to have very dry hair, so I only wash my hair once or twice a week, and when I wash my hair, I do it in the big walk-in shower in the master bath. And hate, hate, hate every minute of it.
Here are just a few of the downsides of a shower:
Even in Arizona, on a 38 degree morning (66 inside, and not yet meeting Mr. AG’s rigorous standards for paying for heat), whichever side is in the shower spray, the other side is freezing cold.
In the hot summer, when the AC fan is on, a stiff North Wind is blowing on your wet, naked body. I hope the words “stiff,” “wet,” and “naked” in one sentence do not violate the sensible new Taste Standards. In no way do I attribute these qualities to the GOPe or even acknowledge that there is such a thing.
When a random husband hypothetically flushes the toilet in another room, the temperature in the shower can drop from “pleasant” to “prohibited by the Geneva Convention” in a nanosecond.
When rinsing off facing the spray, leaving your eyes wide open is painful, but closing them leaves you vulnerable to Norman Bates.
Finally, and worse even than Norman Bates, which at least would be mercifully quick, there is a chance that Harvey Weinstein could appear and demand that you watch him shower. I think he may still be in Arizona. To my knowledge, so far no Hollywood perv has insisted that a woman watch him bathe. Because civilized, patriotic Americans bathe, obviously. That, and the water is too deep to see much of interest.
When you are finished with your shower, and turn OFF the hot water, you now must spend several moist and chilly minutes cleaning up by imitating a professional beggar with a squeegee, scraping down the shower sides and door. (Where are the Squeegee People when they could be useful?)
I invite rebuttal comments from The Shower People, who vastly outnumber us Bathers. You will all be mistaken, but that’s how fair and balanced we at Power Line are.
Stay tuned in future weeks for: Toilet Paper Roll Etiquette: over the top or coming from under? We report, you decide.
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