Live Free or Shower Hard :: Special Kind of Stupid

November 11, 2008

Two weeks ago, my shower head broke. When I say “broke,” I don’t mean I was no longer able to adjust its settings. I don’t mean the water pressure suddenly went way up or way down. I mean the shower head literally broke clean off. It was attached to its hose one day and the next day it was not.

Did someone sneak into my home while I was away and break my shower head? It’s possible, but I’m not sure. However, if anyone out there would like to make a confession, just leave a comment below.

Anyway, for the past two weeks I have had to shower without a shower head. How have I accomplished this? Why, I’ve had to use the hose coming out of the wall. You know, the hose my shower head used to be attached to.

What’s the big deal, you ask?

Look, I’m not one to complain (hush Mom, Angi, Josh, Steve, and anyone else who knows me), but do you have any idea how difficult it is to shower using a hose that hurls water towards you at dangerously high speeds?

The answer: Very difficult.

With no shower head to control the water pressure, the water gushes out of the hose. If I bruised easily, my entire body would be black and blue.

“Why are you covered in bruises,” my boss would ask me. “Is someone hitting you?”

“Oh no,” I would try to explain. “My shower head broke and the water pressure is really, really high.”

“Don’t feed me that crap,” my boss would say. “It’s your parents, isn’t it? Or that bully Hank down in Human Resources. Or maybe it’s that Angi girl I hear you talk about. What’s her last name? I’m calling the police.”

Thankfully, I don’t bruise easily. Any damage I’ve endured thanks to the shower bazooka is internal only.

However, there are other issues that have been problematic. For starters, do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is to wash your face using a hose that shoots hot water towards you at 300 MPH? I’m lucky my eyebrows haven’t been torn off.

Secondly, when water hits your body at such high speeds the water richochets. I don’t mean it ricochets a few inches — I mean it ricochets several yards away. The water will ricochet over the shower curtain and on to the floor below.

What this means is I have to position my body in such a way that the water ricochets towards the shower wall instead of the shower curtain. I’ve never tried yoga, but after these two weeks I’m fairly certain I could teach a class.

Last night, I was finally able to replace my shower head. This morning, I was able to once again shower the way God intended. It was magical.

I will no longer take items like my shower head for granted.

Rear view mirror in my car, I adore you. Soles to all my shoes, I am in love with you. Jacket that keeps me warm the 3 days of the year it’s actually cold, you rock my world. Remote control that allows me to quickly change the channel when Sex and the City, The Starter Wife, an Old Navy commercial, Paris Hilton’s reality show, Obama or any of the thousand of annoying things that come on television; I want to marry you.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

How about all of you? What other everyday items we typically take for granted would you like to publicly thank? As always, feel free to leave a comment or two or ten!

11 Comments So Far

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Angi

;-) 11.11.08 at 1:48 pm:

Personally, I decided a long time ago to never take my computer mouse for granted. Or the touchpad on my laptop. Because do you remember the days when everything was done in keystrokes? Back in the days of DOS and even the early, EARLY days of Windows? Back when they’d underline the first letter of whatever word you wanted (i.e. File) so that you knew which letter went with which command?

Thank goodness, the days of Ctrl+_____ are over, unless you actually remember stuff. Case and point, Ctrl+F now opens “Find”, not “File”. A moment of silence for Ctrl+F=File menu…

Angi

;-) 11.11.08 at 1:49 pm:

Although, it’s been so long that I’ve forgotten that it’s actually Alt+whatever letter, so disregard my previous statement.

But they still don’t underline the letter to indicate that.

It’s been a long week.

kev

;-) 11.11.08 at 3:12 pm:

@Angi: Yes, your computer mouse and laptop touchpad are two excellent things to never take for granted.

(Wait, are you even old enough to remember the early days of Windows? Have you been lying about your age all this time? You’re really 55. Aren’t you?)

Angi

;-) 11.11.08 at 3:16 pm:

Well I don’t know when Windows came out so maybe it was before my time, but when I was a kid we didn’t HAVE it, we just had DOS. I typed papers for school on Word Processor. You know…black screen, mustard-colored font, printed out looking like a typewriter did it. Our printer had a ribbon, and our printer paper had the pull-off stuff on the sides.

Maybe we were behind the times. But my dad’s a programmer (was…) so who knows. I don’t. I was like 7.

Sornie

;-) 11.11.08 at 4:54 pm:

Your showering situation could be compared to showering with a garden hose, only warmer and more private. Neighbors stare when you’re bathing in the front yard.

Jenny

;-) 11.11.08 at 5:26 pm:

I never take my Johnny Depp pictures for granted. Ever.

Your shower head breaking sounds like a vast left-wing conspiracy, Kev.

NOBAMA ‘12

Jenny’s last blog post: To Every Veteran: Thank You

Angie

;-) 11.11.08 at 10:31 pm:

Provigil. I couldn’t live without it, the truest wonder of the pharmaceutical world.

And Angi: Don’t feel bad, girl. I remember those days. I taught DOS classes then Windows came along, so I moved on to teaching both until DOS finally “hit the road.” And I remember dot matrix printers (I still have one here somewhere) and I actually have 2 cartons of that paper. The kiddies use it for drawing me pictures. LOL

Ahhhh, the good old days….

Angie’s last blog post: Why Two Hands?

Erin

;-) 11.12.08 at 12:05 am:

Showers must die at the same time as leaves, because the knob for turning the water on/off, hot/cold in my shower is broken. When I turn it off it just crashes into the bathtub so every time my roommate or I take a shower we have to carefully fit it back on to the lever. Overall, it doesn’t affect shower quality, though, which is why I can’t be bothered to fix it. Showering with a power hose would be much worse, I don’t know how you managed.

I would like to publicly thank my refrigerator for having a light inside.

Angi

;-) 11.12.08 at 12:27 am:

Angie :: AHH! Thank you. Dot matrix, I could not for the life of me remember the correct term for those, haha. I’m sure my dad has some paper laying around somewhere still as well, along with his floppies that for some reason he can’t bring himself to get rid of.

Angie

;-) 11.12.08 at 2:39 am:

Oh, I got those disks, too. Only thing…. This is hilarious. My first computer I got in 1995. Acer Acros 386. Top of the line back then, right? Cost a bundle. When I got it, it forced me to make backups on floppy – 32 of them. So I did it, and I locked them up in a safe box, and kind of forgot about them. I’ve been through a couple of computers now, and I decided to drag that Acer out (I still have it LOL) for the kids to play golf on. It won’t work, OS is corrupted. NO PROBLEM, I say. I dragged out those floppies.

Did you know… floppies basically disintegrate over time… 13 years was just too long, I guess. So I gutted it, thinking I’ll cram a new MOBO in there, blah blah – they don’t MAKE a MOBO that will fit in that case, so it’s basically garbage. The disks went in the trash, and the computer guts are scattered all over my counter. Along with the other ones (now 4) I was picking at but have no money for parts for.

It’s funny, to see the mountain of “garbage” I have stored in various cabinets and every nook and cranny of my house and garage, most of it useless but I can’t seem to bring myself to pitch it. Yeah, I’m nuts.