Henry Marken
I’ve been on the road a lot lately. Figuring out where I’m sleeping the night of has been a routine practice. It’s been a ton of crashing on other people’s couches, cozying up in a bar bathroom stall, or even sharing a prius with Dirty Mike and the boys. No complaints. Dwyane the Rock Johnson only sleeps 5 hours a night and he’s healthy as a horse and more toned than a Michaelangelo sculpture. So as far as sleep goes, I feel like if I do my best to stay on pace with the Rock, I should be in good care.
Of course, there are some other habits and activities between us that may not necessarily carbon-copy each other, such as eating 2.3 pounds of cod everyday. He’s on his own for that one.
My point is that I have had no problem just kinda ‘figuring it out’ where I’ve been sleeping this summer. The only downside actually occurs the next morning.
Figuring out how to use another person’s shower has been nothing short of a fucking nightmare this summer.
A fucking nightmare.
What’s with this new trend of having five goddamn handles all work in unison to let the water pour out. Why can’t every shower operate like… oh I don’t know… a sink???
You turn one knob to get the water going and from there you’re left with two choices: hot or cold.
I mean Christ, now when I try to fire up a shower at someone else’s house, I have to spend 5-10 minutes still in my clothes just experimenting with the water.
I don’t take my clothes off until I like what I got with the water situation.
I have too much experience being foolishly arrogant. Just getting undressed and thinking I can figure it out in the shower, LIVE! I have horror stories of getting hosed with boiling hot or painfully chilling water to rather sensitive areas of my body.
Not to mention, when the shower is done and it’s time to get out, you may have forgotten what you did to get the water running in the first place. You’re closing up shop in the shower and you turn a couple knobs, thinking that’s all you need to turn it off, but what you did instead was greatly intensify one temperature and/or the pressure.
A once relaxing and soothing shower is now a distant memory, as you are up against the wall dodging the line of water, in a desperate panic to turn off the shower. Sometimes this job simply cannot be finished by you and you have to get out of the shower with it running, throw on a towel, and track down the owner of the house and inform this person that you failed in your efforts to turn the shower off.
And you’re not gonna not shower either. If you have to ponder, “Do I really need to shower?” the answer is yes. No way you can just wake up and rep the same stench you took home from the bars the night before. Good God. Even Dirty Mike and the Boys would ask you to tidy up a little before you can be allowed to shack in their car.
My solution/request: Make every shower handle operate like a kitchen sink with one choice followed by two options: On, and then hot or cold. You can give it whatever design you want, modern, traditional, rustic, soup kitchen, whatever tickles your fancy, but for the love of god, keep it fucking simple.
