Establish your very own ‘squatocracy’ in the shower
I’m just going to come out and say it: My name is Johnny Moore and I sit down in the shower. That feels so much better to have my secret out in the open.
We’re out there walking among you all. We’re fathers and brothers, mothers and sisters; we sit in the shower and the time has come for us to stop soaking in silence.
It started when I was a teenager. As mentioned in a previous column, I’m the only person I know who was diagnosed as lazy while sleeping my way through teenagehood.
Doctor: ‘‘The test results are back and it appears you’re lazy Johnny.’’
It was during those slovenly teenage years that the idea first occurred to me. One moment I was showering like any normal teenager, dreaming of an end to acne and hoping for future beard growth; next moment I thought ‘‘I could be achieving exactly this result without the strenuous exercise associated with standing.’’
I’ve never looked back. I’ve sat in showers across the world. I’ve taken the art of the long shower to bold new places and used up entire hot water cylinders with reckless abandon.
And I thought I was the only one until a decade later a friend mentioned to me that her partner was a weirdo. ‘‘He sits down to shower.’’ Hallelujah. I’d found my people. When I talked to this man he explained that shower sitters existed around the globe. I shouldn’t be ashamed that when I look at renting or buying a house I secretly sit in the shower – fully clothed – when the agent isn’t looking. You have to try these things on for size.
Because it’s not as easy as it sounds. Some showers are amazing for sitting. The shower over a bath is a good example. But some don’t have the pressure, nor the orientation to facilitate sitters.
It’s always a thing that happens a few months into any relationship I’ve had. You know those barriers you cross as a couple? Now that I’m happily married it seems like a long time ago, but I remember fresh relationships.
Moving from being comfortable naked in the company of your partner to full blown mincing about while eating toast in the nude. Farting in front of your partner. Going into explicit detail about a particularly exciting bowel motion. Admitting that there’s one Dave Matthews Band album you like. You know the hurdles?
For me, the admission that I sit in the shower is a secret that only comes out after my partner is attached.
Over the past week I have sought to be more upfront about the situation and have been quizzing people about their showering. By my estimate, five percent of the population is sitting down in the shower each day.
And they’re fully functioning members of society. They’re doctors, truck-drivers and hairdressers.
They’re even bankers. Hold on, I’m looking at my notes now and struggling to read my messy handwriting but I’m sure the quote says something along the lines of, ‘‘I only sit down when I’m banking.’’
But we shouldn’t be ashamed. If people wanted to stand in the bath that’d be their damn prerogative wouldn’t it? Who is the world to judge us? So we run the risk of a bit of athlete’s crack. So what?
Besides, if nothing else, sitting down in the shower allows you to squat under the water before you stand up, and as you rise to your feet you get to feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger at the start of the Terminator movies, and if that’s not a life goal achieved then I don’t know what is.