Dr. Frankenstein Would Have At Least Created A Monster Out Of It

(November 14, 2001)

I got one of these "home spa" things. You know the kind of thing I mean -- turn any ordinary bathtub into a hot tub! Invigorating! Soothing! Relaxing! Thousands of tiny bubbles!

Let's jump ahead to the bath experience, shall we? Because as I sat in my ordinary bathtub, I found it was not so much, shall we say, transformed into a hot tub. More like a watery funhouse of chaos. There may have been thousands of tiny bubbles. But it was more like some cranky, loud little rubber robot assassin was trying to kill me by pelting my ass with thousands of tiny, angry little water bullets.

OK, let's break it down. The thing is a rubber mat, kind of like a longish doormat or a thick place-mat. Do you have the mental image? It's got these channels in it, with holes. That goes in the ordinary bathtub. It's supposed to suction-cup to the bottom.

Suction cup. To the bottom. Of the tub. Had I thought through this, which I should have done in the store, I might have realized there are hundreds of suction cups. They vary in size from about like a dime to about like a half-dollar. I press these onto the tub, and then I sit on the mat.

If you'd like to simulate this yourself, go get a whole bunch of bottle caps. Glue them to something like a plastic place mat. Lay it, bottle cap side down, in the tub. Fill the tub. Get naked. Sit."Invigorating," the brochure says. Sure, if invigorating means squirming around in your now not-so-ordinary bathtub as you attempt to find a comfortable position where the hard little nubs aren't getting a little too intimate down there, if you catch my meaning. No matter what you do, you figure out that you're coming out of this tub with imprints on your ass.

Oh but you're not even yet ready to turn it on. There I was, only still just sitting on the mat, with the channels. Oh, the channels. The channels in this thing? For the water to course through? And then the water is forced up through these teeny tiny holes making the thousands of tiny bubbles? Had I thought this through, which I should have done in the store, I would have accepted how much power it takes to pump water through the channels and out the holes. Yes, of course there's a motorized pump. So I have now, in my life, to find a place for, this kind of squat device the size and weight of a small vaccuum cleaner, with a long, gangly hose. Where will I PUT this thing, it's HUGE.

But the storage problem would come later. Back to the tub. I'm in the tub. I take the hose and attach one end to the mat. Now the pump, which has of course been splashed with water and is sitting next to me while I'm in what might as well be my watery coffin, is attached to my mat by this hose.

Coming out of the other end is a long cord.

The instructions say to plug it in. Hi. Water and electricity. Okay.

If you'd like to simulate this yourself, and you're still naked and sitting in a tub of water on a plastic place-mat with bottle caps making indentations in your ass, go get your canister-model vacuum cleaner. Plug it in. Uncoil the hose and put it in the tub with you. "Relaxing," the brochure says. Sure, if relaxing means certain death by electrocution.

Most people would get out of the tub, dry off, pack up the assaulting-bubbling contraption of death-by-electrocution, consider it a lesson learned and write off the wasted sixty bucks. Here's where the problem comes in, for me. I work hard, dammit. I want a relaxing hot tub experience. It is then that I realize the truth: I have just enough of my mother and my grandmother in me to make me just...this...stupid.

I plugged it in.

So now the pump is plugged in, the hose is connected from the pump to the mat, and I'm sitting on the mat in the water. There's a button on the pump that says, simply, "Power."

Deep breath. Push.

If you'd like to simulate this next bit yourself, go get the blender and some old newspapers and gravel. Put the newspapers and gravel in the blender and turn it on. "Soothing," the brochure says. Sure, if soothing means a noise two feet from your head that sounds roughly like you're hosting a tractor pull in your bathroom.

It's a powerful little pump, alright. And it's pumping, and pumping and...well what did I THINK was going to happen? Had I thought this through, which I should have done in the store, I would have considered how hard is it to get ONE suction cup to stick. Does anyone not know that suction cups do everything but suction? Stubborn little buggers, YOU know how a suction cup can be. Sometimes it seems like it's going to stick, but then it never really commits. How about hundreds of them? Wet? And battling coursing water? The mat seeks freedom and prefers to float. If you can get this thing to stay stuck you could be the Olympic Champion of Suction Cuppage. It's a constant battle between me and the mat.

So I sat in the ordinary bathtub, squirming around on the suction cups and channels, pelted in the ass by the thousands of tiny bubbles, unaware of the cats outside the door whose concerned racket I couldn't even hear over the deafening noise of my soothing motor, busily trying to keep the mat flattened down, my paperback on the toilet lid going unread but quite moistened by now the thousands of tiny bubbles, and lest you forget, warily eyeing the electrical outlet.

Nice, relaxing bath.

I really am this stupid, aren't I? But look:

My mother. Without a job, health benefits, or in fact a floor or walls in her "house" can somehow think nothing of purchasing an Italian marble jacuzzi. For a bathroom yet to be built. Because they're out of money with which to build it. This is a woman with champagne taste on a beer budget.

My grandmother. With seemingly endless thousands of dollars stuffed into cookie jars and under mattresses, has never purchased anything new. ANYTHING, from underwear to dining room tables, it's all from trash heaps and Goodwill. This is a woman who is outraged at the cost of pizza. The cheap, seven dollar pizzas. She doesn't even know about "specialty" pizzas from Bertucci's; learning about sun dried tomatoes alone would likely give her a heart attack.

Me? I don't extravagantly decide to HAVE the hot tub. Yet I don't stingily decide to NOT HAVE the hot tub. I STUPIDLY decide that I can have all the splendor of a hot tub for $59.95.

Somebody get me some help before I get myself killed.

(Epilogue: the storage of this unit was never a problem, as it went out with the trash the next day. Sixty dollar lesson learned.)