It was a mistake from the beginning.Much like cute shoes that also remove skin and bone, I was sucked in by the attractiveness of a bathmat. A cheerful stripey thing that matched the bath, and which was cheap at K-Mart, so it didn't seem like much of a deeply shallow extravagance. It really didn't.
Now I don't know what kind of user testing these things went through, if any. I mean, it's not like a bathmat is some newfangled and complex space-age technology. It's rubber. It has suction cups. It sticks to things. That's its job.
But this bathmat, it likes to travel.
Oh yes, it initially seems happy where it is in the center of the tub. But then, during the course of a shower it gets... I don't know... restless. It starts feeling there are other parts of the bathroom that it hasn't seen yet. That it's wasting its time there in the center of the tub floor.
So it packs its bags and skedaddles.
Before I know it, it's half the way up the tub wall. Or trying to reach the shampoo. Or flattened over the drain. And there I am, up to my ankles in water, trying to drag it back to center again.
Of course THEN, it sticks really well. It fights me. It doesn't WANT to go back where it belongs. It's like some angry toddler having a fit in the center of the mall. I have to tell it I'm walking away and counting to ten. Then it loses some of its will and lets me guide it back into place.
The next shower, it's the age-old battle of "Woman Versus Bathmat" all over again.
So tell me, have you ever bought anything that seemed like a really good idea in theory, but turned out just to not work as you'd hoped?
I think knowing this would make me feel better. Because, you know, those relaxing showers have just gotten a little less relaxing.
Now where the heck is my rubber ducky?
------------------------------------------
I hear they don't bathe over at Humor-blogs.
9 comments:
Sorry, I got nothing. Well, except now this image of you naked, wrestling with the Bathmat of Doom. Thanks for that.
My 19 y.o. son has an illness that has resulted in several hospitalizations. During one of his hospitalizations, I happened to be at a garage sale, and there on the table was this parrot...made of plastic, covered with brightly dyed feathers and looking totally dead. You know, like a dead parrot? So I bought it for my Monty Python-loving son and gave it to him. And it did it's job, it cheered him up. Fast forward a few months, and he's out of the hospital, living in his own apartment, and completely broke on mother's day. So what does he give me? You guessed it, the dead parrot--only, to add a bit of himself to the gift, He wrote out the whole "dead parrot" skit on a peice of notebook paper and glued it to the bird. So now I have this totally UGLY peice o' carp sitting on my desk looking at me with his dead eyes while I work.
Um, I guess that's not quite what you meant, is it?
Greg- Sorry-- I don't wish that image on anyone. :) But hey, at least I was keeping the post clean! HAHAHAHAHA!!!
Jennifer- Well, it wasn't, technically what I meant but in spirit and... hey, it's a great story. A regifted dead parrot doesn't happen so often these days. Hopefully it was a Norwegian blue. I hear they have lovely plumage. :)
I guess the dumbest thing we ever bought was the bagel slicer. It did a crappy job on bagels, but almost sliced Babycake's finger off. It's gone now. Good riddance.
Alice- Well how would ya know it was a mini-guillotine, really?? Maybe when Marie Antoinette said "let them eat cake," she was referring to bagels. Ya think?
The most unfortunate purchase that springs to mind is when I bought a discount package for a New York City hotel trip. The hotel, which I'm blanking on the name of just now, is right across from Carnegie Hall, and seemed like a reasonable deal, with assorted coupons for meals, boat tours, drinks, etc.
When we got there, we realized _why_ the company so desperately wanted folks to come to their 'newly rennovated' hotel. Not all the rennovations were successful. The first room we had was a dismal, dank, moldy thing. We dropped off our stuff, went to dinner [but not using the coupons, since, on further inspection, what you would end up paying at the hotel restaurant for your coupon "freebies" would end up costing more than an un-couponned meal nearby...similarly, the other coupons turned out to be linked to so many other obligations that it wasn't worth bothering with them], and came back to rediscover that the mold was intolerable, even with copious amounts of Benadryl.
So it's late now, and we want to change rooms. I decide this is actually a plus, because the hotel didn't seem very crowded, and few newcomers looking for rooms would be expected at that late hour.
We get an apology and a different room. This is somewhat better, on a higher floor and more interesting view....
But while this section was supposedly rennovated, the mattress seemed pretty old, and so bowed that I needed to sleep in some rather contorted position to cope with the acid reflux [possibly also related to the dinner, but mostly the accumulated stress]. Things calmed down finally....just in time for the great Gotham garbage collection festival to begin: we were high up, but in the canyons of Manhattan, if you are above the alley of dumpsters, the sound is going to find you...
Needless to say, subsequent visits to NYC have always ended with us staying with my parents, over the river in Jersey.
Rhet- Oh BOY, yes, you're better off really not staying in the city if you're not sure of the hotel, because even some good name hotels (GREAT chains in other cities) are not so terrific there in NYC. The Warwick was the only one I've stayed at that was really amazing.
MOLD... lovely!
I think mine was crossed with a magic carpet because the minute you stepped on it the silly thing would be taking off for the other end of the tub. Perhaps if I had a shorter tub this would be less of a problm but mine is an old clawfoot tub that came with the house and is a test in balance to get into. I did eventually discard that mat or maybe it just floated away. did leave behind the offspring of seemingly cute and harmless duckies you can make into any ol' design. They all swim to the drain also. Beginning to think that ugly strips would be a fair trade after all.
Chyna- Ah, so it's not just MINE... It's a genre. I am jealous of your clawfoot tub, by the way.
I feel my tub has just enough slope that gravity is enabling the will of this bathmat to check out the drain more readily. I still have it in the tub, but I really do need to change it back to my original non-cute plain beige one.
Still, I keep hoping the cute one will come to its senses and start to behave. :)
Post a Comment