By Our Showers Combined

Showers should be a simple thing, really. Turn the knob to appropriate levels of hot and cold, stand up, and wait for the corresponding water to blast out of the faucet over thy head. Add soap and shampoo to the equation. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. Rins-

It’s no wonder my water bills are high. It’s a vicious cycle.

At my home in Fairfax, it IS that simple to take a shower. In the vein of Whose Line’s Colin Mochrie hoe-down songs, “I Like Showers! I Take Them Every Day!” Showers are a great way to start the day if you have an inherent guarantee that all associated equipment and shower machinery are in effective working order. This should be expected in one’s own apartment. But as I learned once again this past weekend skiing, when one goes on vacation, the only shower you are guaranteed is a shower of laughter when your daily cleansing ritual all goes to hell. I’ll get to that one in a second.

There is precedent in such a theory. Here’s 3 citable cases.

Time: March, 1998.
Place: Orlando, Florida
Event: When on the SHS Senior Trip in Walt Disney World, I was placed in a room with Aaron Boblitt, Justin Morea, and Chris Smith. Among other late-night activities (Risk, anyone?), we waged war with the adjoining room of four fellow Renegades led by Chilkotowsky the Great, and pillows were the ammunition. It’s just a shame for them that we were Greater. For the next three days, any shower taken by me had to be with extra caution. Not because of a sneak attack, but because in our bathroom we held the entire 10 pillow stock of our rivals’ room tucked away, and I didn’t want to get them wet. They could also double as loofahs.

Time: July, 2001.
Place: Paris, France
Event: The Illustrious Elizabeth Grimm booked a hotel room on behalf of the Monroe Project Three to kick off the Marketing Majors’ Month of Eurofun. Good news: We did not have to decide where would be a good place to stay in the 26th largest city in the world. Bad news: the room was designed for short French people. With the shower head below my own head, I found that it served as a better handle than it did a water dispenser. That is, of course, until it fell off in my hand. There’s nothing like walking out of the bathroom and handing the only vital shower component to Sara to inform her that the shower is now all hers.

Time: August 2001.
Place: Heidelberg, Germany
Event: You never know what you’re going to get with a youth hostel. Sometimes you will be put in a room with 50 other cots and 50 other travelers. And sometimes you’ll get your own room with just your fellow tripmates. In Heidelberg, the case was the latter, which meant we had our own shower room. Said shower room, unfortunately, only had two temperature settings: HOT and SURFACE OF THE SUN. There’s nothing like taking a shower in a foreign country by running a wash cloth under the sink in order to stave off melting flesh to relax at day’s end.

Time: December, 2005
Place: Bethel, Maine
Event: The width of the stand-up shower was the width of Chris Condon + 4 inches. That’s 2 inches off of each shoulder. If you drop the soap, you might as well dry off and get dressed – it’s a bigger lost cause than the Cheaper By the Dozen II. You decide how enjoyable it was to shower.