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The Newsletter >
Tub Half Full
May 11, 2010
When I was a younger woman, I lived on hope and change—and nagging. I used to hope that nagging worked and could change the speed at which the world moved. And when I say “the world,” I mean men; okay, really I mean one man—my man.
It took me a while to figure out that nagging is like all other expulsions of internal body gases—frequent, noisy, and rank, because it can turn the most sympathetic of subjects into an unattractive shrew surrounded by a cloud of toxic methane, not unlike a tent full of Boy Scouts farting the alphabet.
I can nag the alphabet. I’m that good.
I had a lot of raw material to work with in my husband, Sherwood the Great—procrastinator. As a kid, he attended one Boy Scout meeting where they tried to make him pound a nail with a hammer. He never went back. He decided he didn’t have to learn to pound a nail right that minute, not when he could wait and learn to pound a nail, later, when he learned to fix the heater coil in the hot water heater, sometime the last day of how about not right now!
When one of the heating coils burned out in the mechanical unit that kept me in the hot bath water to which I had become both accustomed and addicted, I grew determined to show the world and my critiques (generally people who share my propensity for freckles) that I could make a reasonable request for repair work without a nag in sight.
I could do it. I could live nag free. I could quit anytime.
“Sherwood, I can only fill the bathtub halfway full of hot water, and even if I lay down flat on my back the water does not cover all my girl parts. Some stuff always sticks out. It makes me sad.”
Rubbing his manly jaw he looked intrigued. “One of the heater coil’s probably burned out.”
“Should I call the hot water burned out coil man?” I crossed my arms over my chapped . . . umm . . . er . . . girl parts, hoping against hope that my husband’s grisly-monkey-man-brain had not snapped into stones-as-tools mode.
Too late.
“Nope! Nothing to it.”
“Dear, you should know I have made a solemn oath, covenant, and New Year’s resolution not to mention my desire to not have to struggle to submerge my anatomy in a half-full tub of tepid water to you again, in any way, shape, form, or language—domestic or foreign, and yes I realize I have used a double negative. I will not nag you over this. I will not. I cannot for I have oath-ed an oath.”
“Heater coil . . . got it.”
“No, I mean it. I’m on the nagging wagon.”
He looked skeptical and started making vague motions with his hands. He appeared to be cracking invisible coconuts with an invisible boulder shaped tool.
“I mean it, Sherwood, I will not mention this to you again, and I will not fix it myself or employ anyone else to do so; why you may ask, because I’m a stubborn piece of work. That’s why. Consider it a psychological study in the socio-ramifications of motivating men with repetitive words of infinite negativity to get stuff done. ”
He cracked more invisible coconuts.
“I mean it; this is my last nag on the subject.” And it was.
He appeared to be sharpening his invisible boulder tool.
A month passed.
I tried sponge bathing out of a bucket of steaming hot water. It was messy.
Two months passed.
I gave a method of full body water rotation a try—back, front, side, side, back to back. By the time I got back to my back, I was usually crying.
Three, four, and then seven months swirled away like the soapy water at the end of a luxurious soak, and still I nagged not.
I tried showering with my much taller husband but got smacked in the eye with his elbow so many times, I worried about retina damage, besides he hogged the hot water, and I hate showering.
Nine and then ten months passed away like the dew from Heaven. I remained a goose bumpy nag-less wonder: no request, reminder, or repetitive phrase passed my blue lips.
Time continued to pass.
How long did it take for my stones-as-tools-man to fix the hot water heater coil without the stimulus or benefit of my nagging?
ONE YEAR, one chilled bone aching year, that’s how long, and then while changing out the heater coil, my husband stabbed himself in the knuckle with a screwdriver, exposing the tendon. He tried holding the gaping flesh together with a dinosaur bandage. It took six stitches to finally cover the tendon up—twelve months, six stitches, and the development of an irrational fear of goose flesh that’s how long.
Abandoning my nag free experiment, I have since honed my harping to a fine and delicate art, surpassed only by my liberal use of satiric and scathing one-liners. I can nag in my sleep. I can nag in reverse. Sometimes I nag using only my eyes and a well-timed twitch. I can’t say that my husband moves any faster, but at least I can make my contribution to any given problem feel like a sharp stick of motivating female persuasion.
Linda (Rub a Dub-Dub) Zern
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