O P I N I O N
NOT THAT PROFOUND
By Nathan Graziano
When we moved into our current house, almost a decade ago, my wife and I shared the downstairs bathroom. It’s a small, standard affair—a bathtub, a toilet, a sink—but it was tacitly agreed upon when we moved in that our three kids would share the bathroom upstairs, and we would take the one downstairs.
While my wife and I shared a bathroom, there was a long, continuous, prolonged battle about whiskers in the sink.
I realize that this is a fairly common gripe between couples, but my wife takes it to the next level, screaming like I left a severed head in the sink, not a few gray whiskers shaken from a razor blade, clinging to the porcelain.
Of course, as a card carrying asshole of the male race, I eventually began to antagonize her about it, deliberately not shaving for a week, then making no effort whatsoever to clean the sink afterwards, rubbing my hands and grinning in the other room while waiting for the severed-head scream.
The battle about whiskers in the sink showed no signs of ever abating.
Then last November, our son moved out of the house, and we were officially empty-nesters. My son had been using the bathroom upstairs alone, after his sisters moved out, and had left it in a state of complete disrepair.
As I am wont to do when it comes to things around the house, I ignored the bathroom upstairs in the state of complete disrepair for a couple of months, until an idea finally dawned on me: I could now move my shaving stuff and my industrial-sized bottle of Pert shampoo upstairs and make the bathroom my own, effectively ending the battle about whiskers in the sink.
And this is exactly what I did.
So I got to work cleaning it1—even by my standards, which are pretty low, it was gross—then I ordered a frame of Jeff Lebowski from “The Big Lebowski” sitting on the toilet from Amazon and hung it over the toilet.
Voila! A bathroom!
My bathroom—which is now a wicked cool bathroom where whiskers live their best lives in the sink—does not have a bathtub or shelves, just a shower stall and a sink with some cabinets below it. But I’m into minimalism, just a bare bones bathroom.
I even ordered a new shower head and installed it on my own, which is a minor miracle considering my complete ineptitude when it comes to performing even the smallest tasks of handiwork. But the shower head works, and it no longer leaks.
Currently, the walls are the color of an old man’s jaundiced skin, so I’m actually considering painting it at some point, and I’ve had my eye on a shower curtain with a brown bear waving hello with a yellow rubber duck on its head2.
The sky is the limit with my wicked cool bathroom, and maybe, someday, I’ll even replace the blind. Of course, one of the kids could move back then, I suppose, we’ll return to the bloodsport about whiskers in the sink and the severed head screams.
- My wife helped clean. World War III will ensue if I don’t mention it. ↩︎
- If any readers would like to help the cause, donations are gratefully accepted. My wife thinks the bear shower curtain is tacky. ↩︎