On Hot Water And Gratitude

One of the great, unremarkable pleasures of my daily life is a steaming hot shower. It just doesn’t occur to me even to feel grateful for it.

But most people on this planet do without running hot water. So you might think I could handle a cold shower for a few days, especially when visiting in a tropical climate.

But I can’t. And that’s why I’m grateful for the suicide shower.

I’m staying in a beautiful cabin on the slopes of a mountain
in northern Costa Rica. It has electricity and running water and that
special combination of  electricity and hot water nicknamed the ducha
suicida.

In this contraption, water is heated instantly inside the showerhead as the water runs through it.

My previous encounters with this device have not been happy, but this
time I’m traveling in a family group that includes my brother, Jerry.
After I whined my way through one cold shower, he figured out that if
you run the water at full volume for a minute and then turn it way
back, you can have a comfortably warm shower.

Steaming hot – no. But plenty warm enough for me to remember to be grateful.