Bath Tub Boy

I divide the world into two categories: those of us that like to take baths and those of us that like to take showers. I've always been a bath tub guy.

We had one of those big ol' cast iron tubs with the eagle claws on balls for feet when I was a boy -- the kind of tub that Wisconsin people have been known to tip on end and partially bury in the rock garden with a statue of the Blessed Mother within. Wisconsin: home of the bath tub grotto.

My childhood tub had the big rubber drain plug with the chain attached. It also had an overflow valve high up on the tub, and if you ran the not water at a very slow rate, you could constantly replenish your hot water, steaming yourself like a lobster.

When we recently remodeled the entire bath room at the Wilson/Heagle compound, we decided to install the modern version of the above mentioned tub, complete with six whirlpool type jets to soothe the aches and especially the pain of the reconstructed right knee.

I have found the tub the ideal spot to kick back and catch up on my reading with only the occasional accidental soaking of the book mark, or in the case of periodicals, the drenching of those maddening re-subscription cards that lurk unattached somewhere within the pages.

I found out two things of import: turning the whirlpool jets on while the cats are in the bath room unleashes bedlam and dropping a hard cover book onto the bath room floor beyond the tub without warning the spouse scares the hell out of her.

One day I was filling the tub and going about other tasks at the same time. I came back in to the bath room in time to see Hannah the cat jump in and out of the tub in a nano second. It was one of those YouTube moments.