I was thinking about showers and bathes the other day and I remembered something. I remembered one of the first times I tried to take a bath on my own.

I don’t remember the reason I took it was, but I remember I wasn’t supposed to. I was still at an age to be supervised. We were living in Abilene, so 1996-1997 I would guess.

I wanted to be independent, I suppose. I had already learned from mom that shampoo goes first, from another bath I wasn’t supposed to start that my mom finished, so I grabbed the the quart-sized black Tresemme shampoo bottle. I remember looking around the bathroom, part of it was a habit from when my mom washed my hair, but this time it leaned a little more toward not wanting to be caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to.

My mom would flip the bottle upside down and dollop the soap on my head, so I proceeded to mechanically raise the bottle upside-down over my head as well, in the hopes of replicating the size amount, and squeezed.

I knew instantly I squeezed too hard. The feeling on my head was way more than she used, and I realized I hadn’t accounted for how hard she squeezed the bottle because I wasn’t the one squeezing the bottle.

I furiously attempted to delicately gather the thick, grey onto my hands in a feeble attempt to put the excess back in the bottle. I tried to put it back through the flip-hole in the top, but it didn’t work. I sat there for a moment looking around with slimy, partially shampoo’ed hair and a handful of expensive shampoo, wondering what to do.

I’m a firm believer of “You got yourself into this mess, you get yourself out.” I don’t ever practice this with other people, I always provide my assistance, but when it comes to myself I don’t like to ask for help. I hate being rejected, so much of the time I don’t bother putting myself out there. And when I do, there is never an expectation that I will be reciprocated. Also, if I expect the reaction to be negative, sometimes I won’t even bother.

I knew that calling for help was going to get me in trouble because I wasn’t supposed to be doing that anyway, I was going to either finish this and be clean and my mom will be happy she didn’t have to bathe me, or I was going to get caught and still be dirty and my mom will be mad I did something that she said not to.

I don’t remember if I was caught on this bathe, but I know I was caught on other bathes. I think I may have been this age when I started bathing alone.