to bathe or not to bathe

i came up with this last night and i was all pleased with myself. for about two seconds. then i realized what it sounded like. here goes... i think i finally like to bathe. get it? it sounds like i only bathe because i have to when in reality i have nothing wrong with being clean and actually prefer it to being dirty. but what i mean is that i took a bath last night and enjoyed myself.

i started showering as soon as i could. i never liked lying around in the tub. just not something for me. and then, when i was 19, one day near the end of the summer right before leaving for university, i mysteriously had all sorts of huge mosquito bites all over my legs. i went to the walk-in clinic not far from my house and sat in the waiting room scratching my legs until the bites turned into huge, distorted welts. i was crying so hard because i had never ever felt such pain. i was so itchy and i was convinced my legs would never go back to normal.

i got in to see the doctor - they put me ahead of other people because of all the wailing - and was told that the mosquito bites were in fact hives. and hives are the body's way of telling you that something isn't right inside so they did a throat swab. could be strep, could be mono. doc told me to go home and take a baking soda (or powder, whatever it is) bath. still crying, i head home, pour the soda/powder into the tub and get in. a little while later i woke up. still in the tub. still covered in hives. and crying once again. people drown in bathtubs.

and that was the beginning of the worst month of my life. the throat swab came back, positive for mono. to make a long story short, i spent the next 4 weeks not training for hockey as planned, but in bed. and three of those four weeks, when i wasn't sleeping, i was puking. i'm not exaggerating. and i wouldn't puke in anything other than the toilet so everytime i had to puke, which was about 25 times a day, i would wake up and run to the bathroom down the hall. one time, on my way to the bathroom, i fell over (i was obviously a little weak) and my head hit the wall. that's what broke my fall. but i still had to puke, so i got up and wobbled to the bathroom, crying of course. i was a mess.

i lost 40 pounds that summer and didn't make the hockey team in the fall. and then the cruel frosh-15 came and hit me hard giving me the frosh-20 on top of the 40 pounds i gained back once i started eating again. your skin just can't forgive you for that.

all that to say that i don't like taking baths. never have, but after falling asleep in the tub and (possibly) almost drowning, it took years for me to even consider taking one again. but now we have a big tub and i chose to take a bath last night. and i liked it. seems like i finally beat mono. at least there were no hives involved this time.