Sometimes you get “close, but no banana.”
But even worse is when you get “close, and all banana”…
Lately I’ve been having minor PTSD1Real minor–nothing like real PTSD, just to be clear. episodes and I hadn’t been able to quite put my finger on what has triggered them. A few days ago it dawned on me that, somewhat surprisingly, it was our shower that’s been haunting my waking dreams.
Well, lack of a shower, that is. You see, a few weeks ago we discovered a leak under our shower, so now it’s become this huge ordeal involving the insurance company and a mitigation team that’s come in to dry things out. Step one? Mercilessly tear out the shower–and it turns out that they won’t be able to fix their little oopsie for another 5 weeks at least. Super.
Fortunately, we have moved up the socio-economic ladder enough to be able to afford a house with not one, but two bathrooms. Ergo, it’s only been a minor adjustment for us adults to perform our daily personal hygiene maintenance routine in the shower/tub that’s usually reserved for our kiddos.
However, my lot in life hasn’t always been so lush and luxurious…
*Ahem. Cue flashback sound effects, please*
During my final year of college, I lived in a 3-bedroom house with 4 other guys. And this 3-bedroom, 5-guy house had only 1 bathroom. That single bathroom served us surprisingly well, though…under normal circumstances, that is.
Some of my roomies were friends with our landlord (a fellow college student), and apparently they got the blessing from him to replace the shower/tub themselves when it fell in light disrepair a few weeks after I had moved in. Fortunately, the fellas in question were, like me, farmboys and therefore fairly competent DIY handymen.
Heading up the project was my good buddy, the Beautiful Love Muscle,2Not his real name, but it should be! and the ever-reliable BLM assured me that all would be back in working order by time I got back from my little Labor Day excursion to Kansas City. Honestly, I wasn’t worried–I knew I could trust these guys to get the job done. Especially if they had 3 whole days to do it…
You know that famous carpenter proverb, “Measure twice, cut once”? Well…
Lo and behold, upon my return I found that not only were we completely showerless, but all the water in the house had been shut off for the foreseeable future. It turns out that m’boys didn’t exactly get their measurements right, and had purchased a single-piece shower/tub combo that just didn’t quite fit. To borrow a phrase from football, home renovations can be “a game of inches.”
But Chiefs amongst our problems was that they ended up getting in over their heads and, caught with their proverbial pants down, they couldn’t turn the water supply back on without flooding the house until they had got a shower in place. So, there we were, stuck with no H2O for who knows how long. Fan- ----- -tastic.
After 3 or 4 days of dirty dishes piling up in our sink, one of them figured out a temporary work-around so they could actually turn the water back. What a relief it was to be able to at least wash our dishes and hands! And speaking of relief, there was a spot in the backyard where the grass was mysteriously dying, and some of us had a hypothesis that not having water running to our toilet bowl might somehow hold the key…
Anyways, the problem with solving all the non-shower water-related issues was that it allowed a sense of complacency to creep in, and our friendly local plumbers were suddenly not as motivated to fix their unresolved faucet fiasco as they really should have been. Apparently, they felt they had more of a duty to their classes than the cleanliness and comfort of their fellow housemates. And so what was supposed to be only a 3-day weekend inconvenience was now a full-on fuster-cluck that was dragging on for week after week.
Now of course, I didn’t just stop taking showers altogether this whole time–who do you think I am? Dirty Bob? No, I refuse to ever be like him! Instead, I adapted, by golly! Fortuitously, we lived a few blocks from where one could always catch glimpses of the whitest & barest old-man asses that Kansas State University had to offer: the old fitness center/natatorium (i.e. “swimming pool”). Instead of letting grime and stank accumulate on me, I would just pop in the locker room there in the mornings for a quick shower before heading to class, paying no mind to the wrinkly bare flesh that came with the territory. Now I don’t want to brag, but sometimes I can be pretty, pretty clever…
One of these particular mornings, by pure chance I ran into a guy I happened to know, Brian. Well, I knew him fairly well, actually: he was the associate pastor at my church and leader of the Bible study I attended. On top of all that, he and I would meet up once a week just the two of us, in which this upstanding be-spectacled man in his early 40’s would mentor me in All Things Jesus. Yet, even though we had a relatively close relationship, it was definitely a different type of experience to encounter him without a Bible in his hand.
For his part, he was pleasantly surprised to run into me outside of church:
“BJ! I didn’t realize you worked out here too!”
“Yeah, well I’m not technically working out. Funny story…my roommates have been ‘replacing’ our shower for the last few weeks, so I’ve had to come here to take my showers.”
Brian, not wearing his glasses, squinted as he stepped in a foot closer to me so he could see my face more clearly while we talked.
“That is funny. I just got done with my morning swim. Yup, I like to hit the pool at least 3 times a week. Keeps me young…”
“Cool, cool. Well, I’m glad to hear that you’re taking care of yourself…”
Brian, still apparently struggling to see me without his glasses, took another step closer to me.
“Thanks. Thanks. Where are you off to after this?”
“After my shower? Once I actually get to shower, I’ll be off to my Philosophy class. Speaking of which, I really should…”
“Oh, right, right. Don’t let me hold you up! I need to finish up showering myself, I just forgot to bring my towel with me and I was running back to my locker to grab it when I ran into you…”
Seeing my chance to cut off a conversation that had gone on 10 sentences longer than it ever should have, I graciously bid him adieu.
“Big Gulps, huh? Welp, see you later…” I said, wondering if he would pick up on the classic Dumb & Dumber reference.
“…fully-clothed, preferably,” I muttered under my breath as I made sure my towel was firmly around my waist before sauntering off to the showers…
The point of the story is, if you ever find yourself in a locker room, obliviously standing there Buccaneer-ass naked while making small talk with an acquaintance that is less-than-pleasantly surprised to see you, keep the conversation short. And, please, for the love of all that’s holy, keep your distance while you’re at it.
Verily, I say unto thee, just as in football and home remodelling, “It’s a game of inches!”
…
So…uh…are you going to give me credit for writing a Super Bowl-themed blog post or not?
Content created on: 3 February 2021 (Wednesday)
Footnotes & References:
“But Chiefs amongst our problems” This is one of the best puns on TPOTS. This story made me remember, I saw my department’s dean totally naked at the student fitness center (in the locker room, not the main part), that was SUPER awkward.
That’s mighty high praise, sir (uh, that’s a Andy-Samberg-as-Nicholas-Cage reference). It’s always nice to have one of your well-crafted puns publicly appreciated.
Speaking of “publicly”, I guess it’s good to hear that I’m not alone in my awkward locker room encounters, lol.