I was at this Texas country wedding today. On someone’s pasture, with cows mooing all over the place, hay bales as seats, stepping in cow poop everywhere, tables under huge trees for shelter from the sun. We got there early, before most of the people showed up. I was sitting at a table, with two people I once met at another wedding six years ago (and didn’t remember at all) who were having a casual conversation. The woman said: “I had to go take care of my mom for a little bit, and had to take my shower at night, and I hate taking my shower at night, it is SO inconvenient, it just doesn’t go with the rest of my routine at all.” The reasons for that are completely irrelevant. What she said reminded me of being back home and waiting for the hot water to come. During communism, we had two hours of hot water a day, between 5-7 pm. The rest of the time, all that came through those pipes was ice-cold and rusty-looking (and only helpful in the morning to wake you up). We lived on the fourth floor usually (the cheapest apartments were always on the fourth floor as four-storey buildings did not have elevators). There were four apartments on every floor, and if we assume a three-member family on average in each apartment, that’s about 60 people needing to shower in two hours (we have a ground floor back home, plus first, second, third, and fourth floors). The hot water was used up by the ground and first floor residents, and second floor ones if the others did not all shower at the time. There was never any hot water on the fourth floor. We always had to heat it up on the stove, which meant gas spent on it, which meant less gas for cooking every day and more money spent on gas overall. I was used to taking a bath ONCE A WEEK. You might think that is disgusting, but that’s the way it was. The rest of the time I took what Americans call “whore baths”, at the sink, washing your arm pits and your privates with cold water and soap (soap if we were lucky; incidentally, we were lucky because my father smuggled soap into the country – topic for another post). There was never plenty of anything back home. And these people bitch about how inconvenient it is to have to take a shower at night. I would have given anything to be able to take a shower every couple of days. Just saying…