Ryan Reid Illustration + Design

A shower of thoughts

March 6, 2006 | Miscellany

Maybe it’s the soothing sounds of falling bath water, or the perky scents of aroma-therapy bath products, but a lot of people do their best thinking in the shower. This in spite of the fact that it is generally early in the morning, and the prospects for the day include going to work for 8 hours. Two events that usually obfuscate a great deal of creative thought.

So, here are, in no particular order, my most recent shower cogitations.

  1. Why are the shower condiment bottles (shampoo, conditioner, body wash, etc.) smooth plastic? Showers are often wet and  soapy, making things that are smooth and plastic difficult to handle. Shower condiment bottles need textured areas for gripping, especially on the lid, which is where I tend to grab and lift the bottles from.
  2. 100% of prescription eye glass wearers don’t wear their glasses in the shower. I wouldn’t mind  some readable print on the condiment bottles, guys. Since we have an over abundance of bottles in our shower, they tend to get grouped into the four corners of the tub, so I only need to remember which corner has the conditioner, which corner has the shampoo, etc. But when I’m in some one else’s shower, it’s a nightmare. To add to this tragedy, shampoo and conditioner bottles from the same product line tend to look identical. This leads to longer shower times, and increased water bills. And increased water bills really boil my kettle, if you know what I mean.
  3. Liquid “body wash” soap, I’m convinced, is just another corporate level manipulation to get us poor consumers to buy more product than we really need. What’s so great about body wash soap, anyway? It’s liquid, which means you’ll inevitably pour too much, it requires an additional device to scrub your body with (the sponge that isn’t) plus it’s another bottle to keep track of when you aren’t wearing your glasses in the shower. Bar soap was a great invention. No extra application devices required, it’s a unique self contained object easily identified by the spectacle sporters among us, and it lasted forever since by it’s very design you couldn’t use to much. So now that we’ve all been convinced to buy more soap more often, I’m left to wonder: where does it all go when it’s washed away down the drain?
  4. When you go to Wendy’s for a spicy chicken combo meal, you can “biggie size” your order for .59¢. This is common at all of the major fast food style “restaurants”. So I’m wondering, if I can “biggie size” for an additional .59¢, why can’t I “smallie size” for .59¢ less? Maybe I can’t drink the normal amount of pop, and I don’t want the normal amount of fries. Maybe I want a smaller portion. Maybe I’m cheap.
  5. How often do we really need to shower, anyway? I don’t do anything physical all day, I sit in a chair and absorb gamma rays from my monitor. And that’s the job of three quarters of the population. So, who told us we need to shower everyday? Probably the same people who market the body wash. And I totally made up that employment statistic.

No real insights into solving the world’s problems or anything. Maybe the water’s too hot.

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