Why the Shower Should Have Rubber Walls

Here's what went on last Saturday...

Me: In shower, shampooing for a nice change of pace, noticing new fat as usual, deciding not to shave (it's winter!) Taking my time since Steve is home and can...oh, I don't know...enforce no-playing-with-flaming-torches rule while I shower in PEACE.

5-year-old (heard faintly): MOMMMMMY! Uh yahn hair iyoncho glob glob ANT EYE glob.

Me (yelling, so as to be heard the first time): Sweetie, Mommy's in the shower! I can't hear you!

Child (heard faintly, more slowly): Uh-yahn-haaaair-eye-elpo-glob-glob-ANT-glob-glob!!

Me (in my head): Note to self...children must be chained to post in yard
when I am showering. And where is Steve? Perhaps injured in freak coffee-maker accident which rendered him tragically EARLESS.

Me (yelling, again, shampoo sloshing into mouth): I CAN NOT HEAR YOU!!! I AM IN THE (don't say fucking, don't say fucking) SHOWER!!

Child (at the top of her little lungs): UH YAHN HAIR EYE ON GLOW GLOBBITY GLOB ANT EYE GLOB GLOB MURPLE MURPLE, MOMMY!!

Me (eyeing razor and thinking about ending it all) (opening shower door so as to improve communication, freezing ASS off while shrieking like lunatic): STOP YELLLLLLLLING!!! I CANNOT HEAR YOU!!! COME IN HERE AND TALK TO MEEEEEEEEE!!!

Child appears. Naked except for Little House on the Prairie hat. Chastizes me for NOT HELPING and for being ALWAYS IN THE SHOWER and for YELLING at her.

Breathe, breathe, breathe. Channel Carol Brady. Scratch that. Stop everything in order to focus on expunging image of naked showering Florence Henderson from mind.

Me: I could not HEAR you. It's NOISY in here. All I heard was "murple, murple." Couldn't Daddy help you? What did you say?

Child (simply): I want to wear my poncho but I can't find it.

Oh. No poncho. Now that IS big. Why didn't she SAY it was a wardrobe emergency? Why didn't anyone call 911? Oh. Let me just hop out of here right now and find that hideous fuzzy pink thing! Don't want you to wait another MINUTE! Maybe we can find one for Mommy, too, and I can wrap it around my NECK a few hundred times and PULL! (Note to self: always close shower door when banging head against tiles so as not to alarm naked little bonnet-wearin' cutie-pie.)