Um, I Don't Understand How to Operate Your Shower...

I'm one of those who travels for the holidays; not to anywhere interesting but to the homes of friends and family who put me up in the spare bedroom, on the couch, or who kindly kick their small children to the floor so I have a place to sleep. These small children still seem to like me, because I'm their Aunt who they don't see that often and so I have the advantage of always being a novelty to them. Kids between the ages of 5 and 14 have a kind of instinctive caution about talking back, rolling their eyes, using the kind of foul language reserved for the bowels of slave ships, and borrowing my clothes, which they reserve for their parents and those who they see regularly. In fact, as long as I show my face only once a year, they actually roll their eyes TO me, in a conspiracy against their parents, and how "dumb" or unreasonable they are, especially when those parents ask them to eat vegetables, turn off the video games, or not to have sex with the goth guy in homeroom.

So all in all, it's great, except for the problem of the shower. I live in NYC where, on the Upper West Side where I live, the shower valves haven't changed since 1941 and therefore have a "Hot" device and a "Cold" device, clearly labeled, separated by a natural distance and incredible in their logic and simplicity.



I mean, just by looking at them, you know: 1) how to turn the water on, 2) how to make the water "Hot" or, alternatively "Cold", 3) how to get the water to come out of the overhead valve onto your head, 4) how to turn it all off at the end of the event. You can also figure out fairly quickly what to do if the water is: 1) scalding and your skin begins to redden and peel off, 2) freezing so that everything made of flesh rises in self-defense, 3) brown with chunks.

Let me be the first to report that this is not true outside of Manhattan. Apparently everyone else in the world lives in a house that was built post WW2, and at some point, some smart-ass engineers decided that having separate faucets was "too much trouble" or maybe simply not cool, and started building these things into one unit so that the person of average intelligence, and perhaps even people with advanced degrees, cannot figure out how to take a shower without being injured or asking a 7 year old for help.

This phenomenon is most obvious at the gym, where a shower needs to be fast, not only because other people are waiting, but because there’s always a chance that the naked girls with the “buns and abs of steel” might shove you out of the way because, let’s face it, they’re stronger and worked out harder and need showers much, much more than you.

I don’t live far from my gym, so usually I work out and walk home and shower there, with my normal, logical shower that leaves me confident and cheerful at my ability to operate something mechanical without breaking it or having to call in professionals. But sometimes I have to shower at the gym because I’m headed somewhere other than home and I don’t want to have people do that sideways-shifting-away-on-the-subway-bench that I do sometimes when people are… let’s say, unfragrant. So at my gym, here is what I’m faced with:



Now I get the color scheme, ok? I get it. Red is hot, and blue is cold; this is common most cultures and I don’t want to visit the countries where it’s not. But… please. What the hell? There is no way to figure this thing out without getting in there and just – doing it. This means, in my case, getting alternately scalded and frozen, at least twice, until I find the mid-point of water comfort. Those shrieks and whoops coming from the third stall? That’s me, and I’m alone and there is in absolutely no sex involved. The small crowd that gathers around the extra towels awaiting my exit exhibit the collective expression of a group that is concerned, but maybe not enough to risk their own lives to find out what is going on in that glass chamber. And of course, upon my exit, I act like I don’t know where the yelling came from either and walk out shrugging blithely at the be-toweled clique.

And the problem only gets worse outside of Manhattan. This is Cleveland. House of Brian. Nice house, modern, many bathrooms.



There’s an “H”, a “C” and an “Off” which you’d think would make things oh-so-obvious, but is it hot when the faucet handle is pointed at the H or when the handle is pointed at the C? Why isn’t there an arrow? Where’s the color scheme? There are many teen-agers at this house and if you think I’m asking their help, when I’ve already been humiliated not only playing Wii baseball, but even the low-tech board-game “Risk”, you’re nuts.

My family is a “Four Christmases” kind of a deal, so from Brian’s house, I went on to Alison’s (his ex-wife and my friend), also built in the era of the ambitious engineer. This shower is in the redone basement, and so it’s super special, and makes even less sense.



It’s a kind of diamond shape (and tastefully, looks like an actual diamond! Your guests will actually think you have the Hope Diamond in your downstairs bathroom!) and comes to a point, leading one to believe that if you point the point at one of the key letters (H, and C), you’ll have Hot or Cold water. Getting started here is the issue. You pull it out and then you have to dodge that spray until you can snake your hand in there and adjust it until you can safely get the whole body in there. A flushing toilet somewhere in the house can add layers of confusion and trauma, trying to understand whether it’s you controlling the spray, or some outside agent, and whether you should passively wait until things settle down, or go bold, adjusting wildly as armies of 13 and 14 year old girls dab their make-up upstairs, tossing little tiny pieces of toilet paper away, flushing each time, in their quest for Bratz-like slutitude.

I also visited Kelly who just redid her bathroom (what’s wrong with having an old, functional bathroom? People: leave your showers alone!).



This one stumped me utterly. The Barbie was ecstatic: I was glum. What’s that long metal thing over there? What does that do? How can that help matters? Why do we need extra devices protruding from the spigot? It was getting late and people were waiting for me for yet another blended family walk by the water. I tried, I honestly did, but ultimately I had to open the bathroom door and call for assistance. Her 7 year old, with an expression reserved for people who visit regularly (that is: disdain, annoyance), showed up and said, “Let me do it” and she did, getting it right the first time as I towered above her, wrapped in a towel, reminding her that I had a Masters and a driver’s license and also many boyfriends and my own apartment, which didn’t seem to impress her. This one required doing something under the faucet at the bottom, which I pretended I understood (like when I took Chemistry and stared dumbly at the blackboard for a whole semester), just so I could preserve some dignity and not let the little girl get the upper hand. “Oh yeah,” I said, “that’s what I thought, it’s so simple, much easier than mine at home,” I suggested.

The holidays are over and I’m back home and I’ve been taking showers with no problem at all, and planning my trip to Miami in March, hoping against hope that either the retro-rebuilt town hasn’t touched the showers since 1941 or has redesigned them for the simple-minded, or perhaps, that a smart 7 year old is down the hall.