"She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes"

This morning started like many others--with a shower. While I was sudsing my butt, I got to thinking about this routine hygiene and wellness ritual. I do enjoy a good drenching shower, but too often I find the water pressure lacking. I dream of the day I can have 9 shower heads all aiming down. Ones from the sides of the showers, ones shooting water up from the floor at my underside. I do love a shower. But there is something else about showers--they terrify me.

Maybe it's because I'm huge fan of Hitchcock, but when I shower, I never close my eyes for more than a second. Even at my most sudsy, when shampoo is all sorts of dripping down my face, I stay strong to the sting, my eyes wide. I await the entrance of a killer. The slow curtain pull from a gloved hand. The glare of a knife and the moment he/she/it thinks he/she/it will catch me blissfully unawares but won't. I am ready to dodge and run naked out into my apartment building.

An extension of this fear is that when I use a foreign bathroom, even the bathroom of a friend, before I settle down, I look behind their shower curtain. What I expect to do when I unveil the assailant, I don't know. I guess I'm just brave. That or I don't want to die pants down.