I'm not going to talk about when the hot water runs out or when soap gets in your eyes. Those are obvious problems, and I didn't become a creative writing major* because I'm good at writing about the obvious. No, I'm going to talk about the top five shower disasters that you may not have ever considered happening to you. But you will. OH YES. YOU WILL...
1. You do not have all the necessary supplies for this shower
So there you are, trying not to drown in the infinite rain coming from six inches above your head. You've put the shampoo in and you're reaching for the face wash, but it's not in its usual spot. Where is it? Your mind goes to theft. Who would steal your face wash? What kind of dirty-faced robber would overlook the big-screen TV and the inordinately high number of computers and go straight for the face wash? It's not even expensive face wash. You had expensive face wash once. It was from England, and it was the greatest product ever. But it's gone, and you have grocery store face wash and someone has stolen it. Then you remember: It wasn't stolen. You left it at the sink this morning when you washed your face before work. Why did you do that?! Now what are you going to do? You run through your options: Don't wash your face. Save it for tomorrow morning; how dirty can it get between now and then? If your sink isn't far away, you can try to reach for it. But if any amount of acrobatics are involved, forget it. You're going to slip and fall, and they will find you unconscious and naked in your own blood. Even if you survive, the shame will be enough to make you wish you didn't.
2. Your conditioner bottle does not understand that less is more
You've made it about halfway through the shower with no major mishaps. It is now time to start conditioning your precious locks, and you reach for the bottle. You squeeze, but apparently there was a bubble or a clog or a something that caused the bottle to lose its freaking mind and vomit conditioning fluid all over your outstretched palm. Your hand will never become un-slippery, because washing off soap like this only makes the soap more soapy. You run your hand through the water, but now the rest of the conditioner is wet and you can't put wet conditioner in your hair because you remember that one time someone told you that conditioner slides out of your hair if it is too wet. In addition, this much conditioner is never going to wash out of your hair all the way, and even though you did take a shower today, tomorrow your hair will be a grease ball and people will wonder if you spend your days rolling in oil and if your shower is boarded up like a condemned house. To make matters worse, now that half of your conditioner has just committed suicide, you are going to have to replace the product sooner than you had originally planned. What food item are you going to cut out that week to make room for extraneous conditioner-purchasing? Hmm?
3. You did not possess the proper amount of foresight to plan for after the shower
So you survived this far. You didn't drown, you didn't slip and die. Maybe you even remembered to bring all of the right supplies for this shower. You're feeling pretty good; that cleansed, productive feeling is just moments away. You turn off the water, step out onto the rug so your delicate little toes do not have to touch the cold tile. You reach for your towel, so you can start blotting off the water while you're still here, surrounded by warmth and steam. But there is no towel. And you're pretty sure it wasn't stolen, because it wasn't an expensive towel and also you remember meaning to put it back in the bathroom after your last shower experience -- but then you also remember thinking I'll just check facebook and watch one episode of Regular Show, and now there is no towel, and the heat is rapidly leaving your body and escaping the room through the crack under the door and you can't exactly dry off with the bath mat... So what are your options? Run wet and naked through the house until you locate the towel? Do you have hardwood floors? Because if the answer to that is yes, then a flowchart of this dilemma would travel from "hardwood floors" to "instant death." You are not going to survive a marathon sprint for the towel. What remotely soft, fabriclike thing do you have at your disposal that can sop up the water? You close your eyes. This isn't happening. There must be something else I can do. There isn't. You reach for the toilet paper. You shake like a dog, hoping to get some of the water off before you wrap yourself in double-ply. You exit the bathroom a terrifying, dripping mummy. There is nothing cleansing about this; this shower was a complete failure.
4. Water is not the only thing falling from the sky
You remembered your towel. You are not going to have to exit the bathroom as a mummy, not after last time. You even remembered all of your shower products. But nothing could prepare you for the horror you are about to experience. You bask in the water for a minute, close your eyes and imagine that you are in some magic tropical location where the waterfalls are 100 degrees and a handsome native is waiting for you with a towel and a margarita. Today is going to be a good day. Then, you hear a small splash. You look down. Suddenly, you are not alone. A thumbprint of black has appeared from out of the heavens and is now floating around in the water, fighting against the current of the drain. There is nowhere to run. You are trapped here, in this porcelain tomb, with a cockroach, and there is no way out. You can't step on it; even in the shower, surrounded by soapy water, you are not about to get cockroach guts on your feet. Your best bet is to hope it loses the battle with the current and gives up struggling, then you can step out of its way as it floats down the drain to its doom. You better hope it didn't see your face, or it is almost definitely going to tell the other roaches in the sewer what you look like and they will come for you. It might not be this shower. It might not even be this year. But they are waiting for you, and they will make you pay for letting their comrade get carried away while you just stood there pointing and screaming.
5. Paranoia sets in and everything is scary now
It's been a good shower so far. No vermin, no conditioner vomit, and you have a clear visual on your towel. Things are going your way. In fact, everything is so perfect... it almost feels too perfect. There are no cockroaches...that you can see. What about the ones that you can't see? The ones that are hiding, just out of sight waiting for your most vulnerable moment before they inundate you with their disgusting, hard-shell bodies. Soon you will become so covered with roaches that all you will be able to hear will be the clicking of their exoskeletons as they collide with one another and with your flailing body parts. Home boy was serious when he said he'd get revenge on you. And if this isn't the day you are cockroached to death, there are still an infinite number of other threats to your shower safety. Is the door closed? Is it locked? What if you can't get it unlocked because someone has broken in and is filling your house with gas before lighting a match and watching you burn through the peephole? What if you open the door and find someone standing in the hallway with a knife and the severed head of your pet or your loved one? Maybe you should keep the door open, just in case. It might help you to see your threats before they have your cornered. Sure you'll be naked,wet, and soapy, and not at all about to challenge a serial killer to a duel, but at least you have a plan. You are not going to die here, like in Psycho and almost every other horror movie. You try to concentrate on your shower, you try not to get any soap in your eyes. You cannot afford to have your vision compromised. But in the back of your head, you hear creepy rhymes from commercials for horror movies. That Daniel Radcliffe movie, for instance. Why did you memorize that poem? Since when was Harry Potter allowed to fight creepy vengeful spirits with a soundtrack from some demented preschooler's rhyme book? And what about that noise from The Grudge? Why is that noise allowed to exist? Now you can't get it out of your head and you look up at the ceiling, just to make sure nothing is creeping along to suck your soul away. Nothing is. Not right now at least. You look again. You've accounted for any risks that may lurk outside of the bathtub, but what about at your feet? You think of that meth awareness commercial, where the girl encounters her future meth addict self in the shower. What if you are unknowingly destined to a future of meth, and you are about to meet meth-addict you, curled in a fetal position and bleeding from a busy day of hallucinatory scab-picking? This shower can't end soon enough. Who needs a second rinse; you'll probably just blot off any of the remaining soap with your towel. Turn the water off and Get. Out. Now. Before your chances of surviving this shower shrink any more than they already have.
Showers are wonderful things. But they can also be very dangerous and unpredictable. Awareness is the first step, but this is a problem that has no easy solution. Shower roaches are the number one cause of shower-related slip-deaths. Probably. Nobody was able to ask them what they saw before slipping and dying because they were dead already, and the roach probably scurried down the drain to plot with his roach buddies about who their next victim would be. And maybe you've never considered shower serial killers or encountering a horrifying version of your future self, but you will now. I don't think Douglas Adams knew how prolific he really was when he said that, at all times, you must know where your towel is.
*Read: English major with concentration in creative writing, but whatever.
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