showers vs. baths

Roman bath houses were not just to get clean, they were meet-and-greet establishments. There is a Roman bath museum in Caerleon, Wales, for anyone in that neighbourhood. In Andorra there is a replica of a Roman bath which was luxurious when I was there in the summer. I didn't think of it as a place to get clean.

In medieval days the Parisians went to bath houses.

Often they were co-ed. Bathers might be served food, drink and sometimes offered employee body parts. Water might be changed regularly be it a day, week, month.

I know that poor families might have a tub brought out into the kitchen and once a week would heat water and all members of the family would take turns bathing in the same water. Yuck.

There is the rumour that the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water" goes back to the concept that when a large family bathed in the same water that the baby, usually the last one might be missed when the tub was emptied because the water was so murky.

When I was little my mother gave my brother (seven years younger) a bath in the same tub. That is until he deliberately peed in it. I was out of there fast. we did have an old-fashioned claw foot tub which was later replaced by a more modern one, but still no shower.

Once I left home I didn't take a bath for years--make that decades. I did shower regularly.

Then I decided that I would try a relaxing bath with bubbles, candles and Enya playing

It was relaxing -- until -- I thought all my filth was going into the water...crotch juice, anything I might have missed even if I carefully wiped orifices that produce unpleasing masses of digested food I might have missed a few cells never mind the sloughed off skin.

I didn't get out of the bath quite as fast as when my brother peed in the water partially because of the candles. Even wet, I didn't want to get singed.

Straight into the shower.

Now any devil's advocate may point out the truth about water treatment plants and what was in the water prior to it arriving in our pipes and onto my body through the shower nozzle.

And I do go into lakes and the sea which certainly aren't clean...but then I come home and shower.

And listening to music and reading in a shower is at best difficult if not impossible.

Consistency?  

Pas moi.