Dark and Hot

Made you look, right?

So this entry is by special request after I posted this Facebook status: One of the bathrooms on my floor has no hot water and one has no working lights. So, cold shower or dark shower?

I got comments telling me to go for the dark shower. I got one friend telling me to go for the cold shower and turn the lights off so it would be both dark and cold. Well, friends, my shower last night was dark and hot (insert some kind of joke about how I like coffee and men the same) .

So, I’m afraid of the dark. Not in the traditional sense. I love to walk around at night and I love being away from the city lights. But a dark room at night just creeps me out. Also, the shower room in my dorm has a row of dark gray stall doors that extend from ceiling to floor which look kind of like new age burial chambers.

So I took my shower in the dark. There was quite a bit of humming involved, even though I'm not normally a shower singer. I happened to choose the stall furthest from the door. This wasn’t out of some false sense of bravado. It was merely because the lights turn on by sensor normally and I wanted to make as much movement as possible, in the vain hope the lights would magically reawaken.

My shower went without incident – until I heard the scraping of fingernails on the wooden door, punching in the code to open the lock. Normally this is a good sound, but then the door opened, I heard some heavy breathing, and then it swung closed. I couldn’t tell if the person had come into take a shower or left. So it turned into one of those things where you imagine you hear things for about five minutes. Also, there’s a gap between the stall sides and the floor between the stalls and I kept imagining someone’s hand reaching from in the others stalls – probably scaly and green and undead – to grab my ankles. This led to me standing in the center of the shower, my shampoo bottles around my ankles in a protective circle.

Of course, with my lack of coordination, this was a recipe for disaster. I fell down twice, once when I was trying to leave my protective bubble and once when I was trying to dry off without the undead lurking in the shower grabbing my ankles. I decided to get dressed back in the safety and light my room.

Now things get really fun. I steeled myself and left my stall, holding my shampoo caddy and clothes in one hand, the other holding the top of my towel, which was wrapped around me.  Of course the second I was in the aisle I imagined something from The Shining coming for me, so I shrieked a little and made for the door like my life depended on it – and who knows, maybe it did.

Anyways, bathroom floors tend to be wet and slippery. I’m sure you can imagine my epic wipeout and subsequent panic when I realized I had dropped everything. There are a couple problems at this point. 

1)  I dropped my razor. It could be blade up. I could step on it and slice open my foot. 

2) This would inevitably lead to some sort of heinous infection.

3)  I dropped my dirty and clean clothes on the wet floor.

4)  I couldn’t find certain articles of clothing.

5)  Oh right, I dropped my towel too.

So I had a choice.

A)   open up the door to see more clearly in the light from the hallway so I can find my things.

B)   run naked back to my room to get dressed and then come back with a flashlight (not my brightest idea).

C)   sit down and cry

D)   laugh hysterically

Happily, I went for d).