My Shower Woes

I know what area of my body is bound to be the cleanest at any given time. It is always my chest.  This is because the majority of my bathing the past few years has taken place inside of extremely tiny showers, and I don’t really feel like doing a complicated maneuver to be able to wash my legs. I stretch pretty much all day every day, and I still have a hard time soaping up my whole body in these minuscule Israeli showers.

You would have to be a veteran cirque du soleil performer to be able to comfortably maneuver in the shower that I am provided with. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was all the auditions for Cirque consisted of. They wheel out a classic Israeli shower and tell people they have to clean themselves without knocking over the soap container and breaking the cap, without bumping into the handle and causing the temperature to get thrown completely out of whack, without banging against the glass so hard you are legitimately worried it might crack, and without becoming claustrophobic because the ceiling slants downward and just barely clears the top of the shower door. That ceiling is really eerie. It gives the illusion that you are completely sealed into a tiny, watery prison.

But really, who cares about consistently washing your legs? I bet I could go a year without putting soap on my legs without anyone noticing. Maybe even the rest of my life. In fact, if I was offered anything over 1000 dollars to not wash my legs again as long as I live, I might do it. It would provide peace of mind and help save me time. I have a really bad sense of smell, but I find it hard to believe that my legs would start smelling that bad.

Anyway, what I do know is that my chest and stomach are spotless. I generally just smear some soap on my chest, rub it around a little, hit the face and arms, and `then I am out of there. I recently listened to a doctor talk about how a ten minute shower using regular, unfiltered water is basically the equivalent of drinking a gallon of filthy ditch water. The more I think about that the less sense it makes, but it scared me out of long showers for the time being.

And I mean come on, this era of constant bathing that we exist in is very new. As recently as a hundred years ago most people could not just take long hot showers whenever they wanted. People might have smelled slightly worse, but the world got along just fine. Dang, a lot of people can’t consistently shower today. Look at our men and women in the armed forces. From what I understand they get like a 23 second cold shower every 2 weeks.

I couldn’t handle that, mostly because I need to spend a solid 5 minutes letting the water run at full blast and getting the temperature just right before I even set foot in the shower. I will make minute, precision adjustments to make sure that the water is perfect before stepping in. There is nothing worse than entering a shower that is a little too cold for your liking. Actually, those little droplets of water that fly and hit you as you are waiting for the shower to warm up are worse. Those tiny flecks of water are somehow straight from the arctic, I swear. They hit my skin and you can almost hear the goosebumps forming. I begin shivering like its my first day in AA and all I can think about is how bad I want hot water all over my body. I think I would be pretty terrible at holding out if I was getting tortured:

Torturer 1 “You got the information pretty quick, what did you do?”

Torturer 2 “We fed him, let him watch TV, let him take a nap, and then we offered him a shower. He started saying, ‘isn’t it going to heat up, isn’t this water going to get hotter, did you run out of hot water, do you even have organic soap, WHAT IS HAPPENING?!’ Once the first few stray droplets hit him he gave up everything.”

Speaking of making small adjustments in water temperature, the place I am in now has the most sensitive handle I have ever used. I know I am prone to exaggeration, but I am being completely serious about this one. This handle was designed by some sadists. They were like “Ok, the whole idea of a handle existing as an accurate representation of a wide range of temperatures has been done before. What the people want is a handle that makes the water ice cold for the first 49 percent of the turn and steaming hot for the last 49 percent of the turn. That leaves the person with a 2 percent window, a roughly 4 degree arc, within which all the real temperature decisions are made. The joy the person feels when he finds the perfect position for the knob will be worth all the hassle.”

With this handle, a centimeter push can be the difference between chilly and perfect, but you go a centimeter more and you might as well check yourself into the burn unit. That makes it especially dangerous to do any movements with your eyes closed. I have made plenty of mistakes that left me writhing in agony, and I now shower in a state of constant vigilance.

So that’s my complaint for the day. The final regular season game went well in every respect except for my shooting percentages. I missed four 2’s, two 3’s, and one free throw. This uninspired effort produced the trifecta of pushing my field goal percentage just below 50, my 3 point percentage just below 30 (If anyone finds my 3ball, lost and alone somewhere, kindly return it to 20 Hachermon st. Beer Yaakov, Israel), and my free throw percentage just below 90. Basically I would have been much better off not shooting at all the last two games. So it goes. I’ll have chances to improve on all that in the playoffs, which start Monday.

Some pics: