My Biggest Fear About Getting Older: The Pitfalls of The Shower

Every year, I watch the years tick away and I realize that I am not getting any younger. I thought maybe — just maybe — I could be the person to buck the trend of getting older as time progressed, but alas, this wasn't the case.

Getting older is scary.

You start to lose your physical and cognitive abilities, and every day tasks become difficult.

However, the scariest thing about getting old is the shower.

As a youngster myself, I put zero thought into showering. You hop in, you hop out. Boom. You're clean. Half the time, so little thought is expended that without realizing it, I'm suddenly dripping wet and wearing a towel.

Once the years roll over to seventies, eighties, and up, the shower becomes your own personal Temple of Doom.

You know that things are getting rough when you have to start adding safety equipment to the shower. It starts with metal handles and anti-slip shower mats, but before you know it, you're wearing a harness and a crash helmet.

What a brutal existence, where every time you want to bathe you have to gear up like you're jumping the fountains at Caesar's Palace.

Soon you'll have to measure your launch trajectory to make sure you can safely swing your frail legs up over the side of the tub.

I will say that of all the shower safety apparati out there today, the only one I really dig is the walk-in tub. I recently saw a commercial for one, and those things seem pretty sweet. If there weren't such a stigma around them, and if filling one up didn't use more water than is needed to keep a captive orca comfortable, then I guarantee they'd become popular with able-bodied youngsters.

But if all of these safety measures fail, there's always the ol' Life Alert clicker that I've seen on TV a thousand times, but have never actually encountered in real life. With cell phones around, are those still a thing? were they ever a thing? I feel like I would've heard a story about a friend of a friend whose step-grandpa tripped over a shoelace (despite the fact that he was wearing loafers at the time) and was saved because he hit the Life Alert button and choked out the universal Life Alert greeting, "I've fallen, and I can't get up!"

I don't know that Life Alert as a great shower safety measure. It may not be the best idea to hand Nana an electric beeper and tell her to hop in the shower with it.

ZZZZZAAAAAAAAPPPPP!