11:04 a.m. - 29 June 2001
Bath time
I came late to the simple pleasure of a long, hot soak in the bathtub. When I was little, I hated baths, and would put them off as long as I could. But once I got in there, I would stay for hours. Actually, the first house that Mom and Dad bought – I was three – didn't have a bathtub at all. One of my earliest memories is taking a bath in the deep double sink.
I always associated showers with being grown-up, so I switched as soon as I could to taking them. Granted, I take showers like my mother: as long as possible. Mom swears it was the only way she could get any privacy when we were little, so she always takes very long showers. These days, she gets up early and goes to the gym where she can take as long a shower as she wants.
In college, baths weren't really an option. I can only think of a few bathtubs in the two buildings I lived in on campus, and none of them were particularly comfortable. There was always a rush for the showers around 7:30am, since the first classes started at 8:30. Besides, all the education majors had their student teaching, so they were up early as well. Conversations between shower stalls weren't terribly uncommon, and shaving was definitely a learned art.
It wasn't until a good ways into my sophomore year, though, that everyone started looking forward to showers, particularly in the building I lived in my last three years at Converse. The plumbing in that building was old and so when anyone in the building flushed a toilet, the water was scalding for about thirty seconds. Unless it was someone in the same bathroom who yelled "flush," there wasn't any warning, either. We all became pretty good at dodging the hot water. One of the few good things the college president (at the time) did was fix the plumbing in that building so that we could shower in peace.
Even now, I take a shower nearly every morning (I admit to being dirty on the weekends if we're not going anywhere). I don't function properly until I've had that stream of hot water pelt me. I never understood people who took a shower at night, since I'd feel dirty by the time I got up in the morning. My sister, however, thinks it sacrilege to be dirty when the sheets are clean. Just one of many things we disagree about.
But every now and then, I get a craving for a long soak in water as hot as I can stand it. Last night was one of those rare times. Since I can't stand to sit in my own dirty water, I always take a quick shower first and then fill up the tub. I'm currently out of any frilly girly stuff, so I just added some of the gel that we use to clean the bird cages – it's non-toxic and meant for people, but it can also serve as a disinfectant for the cages. It made mountains of suds, so I just sat, and soaked, and read a book. My glasses and inherent clumsiness make this a tricky endeavor at best, but I managed to keep everything dry that should be dry.
And afterwards, I wondered why I hadn't gotten into this habit earlier.
