In which our hero is a moron

Those who know me best, the cohabitants of dorm rooms past, the occasional snuggle buddies, and the odd parent or two, are probably aware that I am, despite my many to borrow a Japanese expression "charm points", a profoundly stupid human being about 90% of the time. Do note that relatively speaking, the average human might be profoundly stupid upwards of 99, even 100% of the time, so I may be well ahead of the curve. Still, there are certain things, which I routinely find myself doing throughout the course of my life, which to the outside observer would seem like an elaborate system of self-handicapping. As if the world were simply too easy, and required additional self-inflicted challenges to give it a sporting chance.

For example, for the past 2-3 weeks I have been showering by using a tub spigot, and a large plastic basin. This was because my shower-head decided one blustery fall day that it would only accept vague suggestions as to what were acceptable temperatures. It understood the far ends of the spectrum pretty well, the freezing cold, and the literally boiling, but the whole middle habitable bit was apparently beneath its refined sensibilities. For a while I attempted to dance in and out of the liquid fire shooting from its mouth, and then when that failed, attempted to switch the temperature from boiling to freezing approximately every 13 seconds so as to maintain a temperature somewhere in between the two. It was a lot like flossing with a cobra, which is to say impossible, not to mention dangerous. Eventually I gave up and switched to the romantic, but all together ridiculous bathing procedure seen in Japanese period pieces, involving long takes of a steamy room, and quaint wooden buckets which samurai and ladies of the court would use to pour water over themselves. Only my bucket was molded plastic, and my tub, in so much as it was apparently designed with whales in mind, takes about 1-2 literal hours of water running to fill it to the point where one could scoop water with said bucket. So why not, I think to myself alight with cleverness, just fill the bucket right out of the tap! Aha you old dog! You've done it again!

This method of bathing turned out to suck. Increasingly so, the colder it got. It turns out that the period when you're actually dumping water over your head is all well and good, but the minute intervals in between treatments are just long enough for the thin sheen of water on your back to practically frost over. Apparently samurai and ladies of the court were tough old bastards, at least in so much as cold was concerned. But I soldiered on, freezing and huddling around the faint trickle of the tap, and counting the days till spring.

Sometimes, I have what I have come to call "good" days. Feel free to use the term, I'm quite proud of it. On these days, for reasons perhaps outside my control, something incredibly small goes right, very early in the day. Today, it was class getting canceled, due to the teacher being absent. I was informed of this before I even left the office, an utter rarity, and thus had a whole eight-thirty to four-fifteen stretched out ahead of me, brimming with possibilities. I spent the entire day whacking around the kanji charts, learning words such as: memorization, mnemonic device, record (world, and court), standard, and crushing defeat of the soul. I even managed to produce a fine set of cards, so that I could continue practicing these kanji in my ample downtime on buses and the like.

I return home to a world still inexplicably brimming with possibilities. I go for a run for the first time in...actually I don't think I've ever gone for an actual run in which I moved and the floor did not. I went for the first run of my life! On the way back to my house, I ran past my favorite little swimming hole, but in its place was an Atlantean continent of algae-covered coral. Apparently I have never been there at low-tide, which is indeed quite low. It was beautiful. I ate real food, which I had made the night previous, paid off my loans for the month, and checked on the yen-dollar rate and found that despite its brief rebound it was again forecasting a very bright future for the yen-earning JET. I went exploring, and found a Christmas tree, and ornaments, which I placed beside my television. Hidden cleverly next to the boxes, disguising itself as a space heater, was a space heater. How wonderful! I can turn it on in the mornings, and instead of facing the horror of stepping out into a world tens of degrees colder than my warm cocoon of bed, I can ease into the transition. And then to cap the night off, I hopped into the shower-cubicle to throw buckets of water all over my head!

But then I got to thinking: it has been one of those "good" days so far. Why not see if I can't keep my streak going and fix this shower? About 3 minutes later, I have done so. I, ladies and gentlemen, am a moron. Somehow in the entire time between the shower-head rebellion and the great reconciliation (as the events shall be known in the history texts) I never once actually sat down and TRIED TO FIX THE DAMN SHOWER.

I apparently inherited, if not the raw mechanical acumen of my father, at least the basic ability to put the things I take apart back together, most of the time. It turns out that this can solve an amazing number of problems. Like for example, when one removes the shower head and finds that the "hose" portion of the shower does not have heat-schizophrenia. Or when one removes the metallic plate with the holes in it, and finds that there is a cumulative cup and a half of sand lodged in them. Apparently, and don't as me exactly how or why, the makers of this particular water heater/shower unit decided that obstructed water flow could potentially cause explosions or the apocalypse if the water were at an appropriate temperature for bathing, and some sort of fail-safe was put into place for the sake of unborn generations.

I will not say that the world is looking brighter. I will however suggest, that the world has always been plenty bright. If you can just get over yourself long enough to take the blinders off.