The old saying goes: April showers will bring May flowers.  Well in my opinion showers should play no role in the annual bloom of our lush vernal vegetation.  Showers are annoying, awkward and cruel.  I have an unpopular opinion that showers are more detrimental to society than they are beneficial.

If all of Earth’s existence were condensed to a twenty-four hour window, unicellular algae would appear around 2:00 PM.  Dinosaurs would show up around 10:50 PM and showers would hardly even make it on the clock¹.  The Earth has survived without organisms taking showers for literally millions of years.  It is unfathomable to me, why humans, with our self-aggrandizing tendencies, constantly feel the need to wash off the very soil that bore us when none of our single or multi-celled predecessors seemed to care.

Our ancestors did not take showers as frequently as us (or sometimes at all). Yet we look upon our great grandparents, many of who only took one shower every month, as unhygienic beasts.  This need to be “progressive” has driven us to take at least one to three showers every day!  This exponential increase in shower frequency should indicate an alarming trend.   The shower has a voracious appetite for human usage.

We fall right into the trap too.  The shower lures us into a false state of security.  “Come into me,” calls the wet nemesis.  “For I am warm and moist and full of alluring smells.”  This is a type of predatory baiting commonly found in the animal world².  Much the way a Venus Flytrap lures insects into its jaws with fragrant aromas,  the warm shower lures people into its gentle mandibles with steamy radiance.  And like the Flytrap, the shower’s mist clamps around our naked body and we are devoured.

What kind of institution is a shower that makes its user strip nude in order to use it anyway?  This perverse practice is not found in any other section of society.  If the first bicycle required its rider to remove their clothing in order to operate the machine, I highly doubt the Tour De France would exist!

Yet the shower entices its users to shun their inhibitions.  This phenomenon can be found in the men’s locker room of any LA Fitness, YMCA, or other gymnasium in the country.  Invariably, there will be at least one older man standing before God and Country completely nude waiting to enter the cleansing chamber³.  His faded terry cloth barely covering his ancient protuberance.   The shower has rendered him oblivious to societal norms.  If good manners are any indication of a society’s evolution, surely this display is one of a dying culture.  And we must all agree that an elderly man lackadaisically folding his workout shirt while completely bottomless should be concerning.  Comedians have been calling our attention to this issue for years and still we choose not to act.

Showers are also hypocritical.  The stated purpose of a shower is to ostensibly get things clean.  We enter the stall in order to rinse away the accumulated dust and dirt and filth of living.  Why then are we humans required to periodically clean the shower?  This is a problem that should take care of itself, but doesn’t.

Finally, showers sometimes have spiders in them⁴.

As one can see, showers are not our friends.  Rather they are tempting death traps, whose soggy siren call entices naked elders and arachnids alike.  Although they provide marginal benefit to our collective standards of hygiene, where does it end?  For these reasons, I say, “Warm showers bring funeral flowers.”

1. Diamond, Paul. Making Things into Clock Metaphors. New York: Norton, 1999. Print.

2. Gordon, Mike. “Carnivorous Bathroom Fixtures” Honolulu Advertiser 14 Apr. 2009, home final ed.: D1+. Print.

3. Limbaugh, Conrad. “Scrubbing the Elderly” Comp. Andrew Todd Newberry. San Francisco: Freeman, 1982. 104-11. Print.

4. Wife, My. “Shrieking Near the Toilet” Mountains Out of Molehills 14 Apr. 2009, home final ed.: D1+. Print.