Debate: Baths vs. Showers

By Jake & Glenn 

Since the conception of the One Year in Texas debate article, Glenn and I have strived to tackle only the hardest-hitting, most controversial and relatable topics imaginable. Between health care, existential philosophy and the existence of an afterlife, this series has tackled the questions that have plagued humanity for 6,000 years. Now we tackle the most fundamental of all: baths or showers? Everybody has taken both a bath and a shower in order to rid themselves of bodily odor and oils. Being cleansed by water is one of the great joys of life. If you're a Christian then you believe that you can't get into heaven without being baptized (a type of bath that cleanses your putrid baby soul). So as the topics of afterlife, the nature of our being and water converge, let us decide what is the best way to clean yourself literally and figuratively.

Jake: If we don't want to end up catching the bubonic plague we must schedule regular cleansings for ourselves. This is one of the sad ironies of life. Children hate to bathe, but adults can't get enough of it. It's the only time we don't have to deal with our children, lovers or bosses. regular cleanings have saved more marriages than Viagra has costed.

I would like to go on record as stating that showers are the ultimate way to rid yourself of dirt, grime and grit. In a bath you're literally stewing in your own wretched filth. You're also wasting gallons of water that could otherwise be used to water beautiful flowers you could place upon your murdered mother's grave. Showers are a religious experience. I often find myself on my knees while showering, even sometimes when I'm alone in it! I don't have the time to fill up a bathtub and then to sit in it for several hours wondering why the water will not go down the drain. I can't even figure out how to properly take a bath. I searched the internet for tips and the only search result that turned up was this very article expressing my bath taking befuddlement. If this is the world you want to live in, Glenn, then you go right ahead.

Glenn: I'm not going to hang here upside down and try to argue that showers are awful. They aren't. I shower. Jake showers. Even serial adulterers like Senator John Ensign (R-NV) shower. As we get older and have more things to do in a busy day - such as cheating on your wife - showers become the defacto method of cleansing. The value of a bath isn't that it's the most time efficient but rather that it's the most emotionally cathartic. I can't even tell you the number of times I've drawn a bath and slipped into it slowly with the full intention of cutting my wrists. But once I'm actually in there I realize that things aren't as bad as they seem. Jake is right about how adults like showers because they are an escape from our lives but a bath is like finding a whole new life. Sometimes I pretend I'm the Queen of Egypt or a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. In a shower, the unrelenting stream of scalding hot water burns your skin and inhibits your mind from truly checking out and gaining a whole new perspective on life. Baths are my LSD.

Jake: Glenn is right about one thing: baths are associated with violence. You would never slit your wrists in a shower because your bff called you shallow, would you? Nobody has ever heard of a blood shower, but everybody has heard of a blood bath. I refuse to take part in anything that has such a long history of unnecessary violence, which is why I never vote for republicans. Showers are only associated with great things: gold, jewels and rain. I've never been bathed with jewels, but I've been showered with them. A rain bath has never made the grass on your mother's grave grow, but rain showers keep it vibrant and green. You can't drown a cat in a shower! Nothing bad is associated with showers, only with baths.

Glenn: Nothing bad is associated with showers? I'm going to go back on what I said and insult showers because I feel like, as a Republican who supports violence, I have been insulted. Perhaps you're forgetting the greatest murder scene of all time: **SPOILER ALERT** Norman Bates stabbing Janet Leigh's character in Psycho. That is a scene that simply could not have happened in a bath. In a shower there's much noise, and a curtain hanging perfectly to display a murderer's silhouette. I don't know if this is the fate Jake wishes for our female readers, but this is why I do not know a single woman who takes a shower without holding a knife herself. The worst thing that happens to a woman in a bathtub is dropping her laptop in it.

Jake: If we disregard the violence aspect of baths (which is very hard for me to do) there is still plenty of horrible atrocities associated with baths. If you stay in a bathtub for an extended period of time you get all pruney like a raisin. Perhaps this is Glenn's idea of sexy. I wouldn't know, we're both men and we never share our feelings with each other. We just talk about the "chicks" we'd like to "bang." Pruning is not the only frightening thing about taking a bath, you could also drown if you fall asleep. I dare you to fall asleep during a shower. It's impossible! A bath is too relaxing. It's like liquid Ambien. Let's not even mention the candles that you have lit, which are just begging to set your house on fire leaving you and your father dead and buried next to your mother.

Glenn: This is getting too far away from which is better to which is worse. What Jake says is bad about baths, I think is good. I don't need my friend to steal me Ketamine from her veterinary job because I can just take a bath with the same effects. Why is it that children - our most pure judges of value and character - prefer baths to shower? There's something more innate to the idea of cleansing yourself in a pool of water. The concept of a shower wasn't even invented until 1883, which was the same year the concept of eugenics also came into being. Showers represent something we're forced to do as we get older and have less time to enjoy our cleansing. We spend so much of our adult lives trying to get back to the things we loved as children: cartoons, diapers, unrelentingly cruel bullying behavior. A bath is the ultimate way to feel a connection with all of humanity. Just don't pee in it!