You are afraid of the claw (part 2)

Brett takes a fiendish delight in tormenting me while I shower. When we had glass doors on our shower, he would wait until I was rinsing my hair (and hence had my eyes closed), sneak into the bathroom, slam both hands on the glass, and holler, "RRRRRAAAAWWWHHHH!" It was quite startling and did not endear him to my heart.

Now that the glass doors are gone, he has to find alternate ways of making my showertime a living hell. He will still creep in and holler while slapping the shower curtain around, but it's not really the same. And after so many uses, it's lost what little effectiveness it had in the first place.

He was quite fond of dumping things over the top of the shower curtain for a while. You know, flour, Kool-aid, ice water, stuff like that. Operations like that, however, were quite a bit more risky and less likely to be successful. He might dump an entire gallon of carefully prepared ice water over the top, only to discover that I was at the other end of the tub shaving my legs. There was also the retribution factor. If he didn't bug out of there fast enough, you can bet I was going to spray him with the showerhead.

His new favorite game is to very quietly reach his little paw in and turn the water knob from "Ahhh...warm shower" to "Holy cold water, batman!" This is very smooth since it's almost completely silent and he can be in and out before I even know he was there.

I am on constant alert when I know Brett is home and awake during my showertime. I've had to change the way I shower, just to be ready for his little surprises. I used to let the warm water massage my back for most of the time. Now, I face the faucet, ready to slam down the diverter if I see his grubby paw intruding on my space.

Brett laughs at me for the noise I make when I do see his hand dart in and out of the shower. Even if I am successful in stopping the cold water from reaching me, I always yelp. Or...yawp. Or make some other non-human sounding holler. It's hard to describe. It sounds like, "Aaarbbbgggllliiii!" Or something like that.

The noise is visceral, guttural reflex. I can't control it and I certainly can't stop it. I had to explain it to Brett this morning.

"You see, my first thought when I see your hand is not, 'Oh no! Cold water coming!' or 'Ack! Brett's up to his old tricks!' No. My first thought every single time is, 'A disembodied hand! I'm going to die!' It always takes me a minute to realize that it's YOUR hand."

Over his peals of laughter, I tried to explain that when I was a youngster I saw a movie about a guy who kept a severed hand in a jar on his desk. The hand came to life (or maybe he was keeping it alive), tipped the jar off the table, dragged itself through the shattered glass, and began crawling across the stone floor. It was terrifying to me. For weeks, maybe months, I had nightmares about severed hands dragging themselves across stone floors to kill me. (In the movie, the scientist stopped the hand by pouring a beaker of acid in it. I wasn't allowed to keep a beaker of acid by my bed, though.)

Someday, a disembodied hand really is going to try and get me in the shower. I just hope my cry of, "ARRRRBGGGLLIII!" is enough to scare it away.