The Cleanest Man in the World

Dear Posterity,

My wife, Amanda, always tells me I am the cleanest boy that she has ever met. I have decided to attempt to explain why she says this...

You see, as a child I grew up in a little town in Maine. My mom and step dad were attempting to build their dream home snuck away in the woods. I think it was because my mom loved The Little House on the Prairie and wanted a house in the big woods. Since we were poor and my mother always had a sense of adventure, we lived in a pop up camper while our house was being built. We had no running water which means that we either showered when it rained or went to the beach to bathe. We also went to the bathroom in an outhouse (google it)!

Since we never knew when your next shower would be we didn't worry too much. Once the clouds rolled in, we would get the soap and a towel and anxiously wait for the rain to fall so we could be clean. As you can probably imagine, living in a pop up camper doesn't leave much space to play indoors so we constantly played outside which I am sure led to some pretty dirty children. I don't remember much about the joys of showering in the rain. I've probably blocked it out but I do know that it happened.

Eventually the basement was finished and we were able to move into the basement. We still didn't have running water for a while so we continued this tradition for what seemed like years. We eventually got running water but it was cold. This meant that we would warm a pan full of water at a time on the stove and pour it into a metal tub to bathe in. Since it was a metal tub the water would cool off quickly and we would bathe in what seemed like ice. It really didn't matter to us. It was like a freaking day spa compared to showering in a swimsuit in the rain. My Aunt Erin showed me a letter that I wrote to her while she was in college. It simply said, "today is a good day. We have running water." Three months later she received a follow up letter, "we have hot water."

During my teenage years my parents would complain about how long my showers were and how many of them I took. I never paid attention to them and never thought twice about it until I got married. I remember the first time that I showered twice in one day and my wife made fun of me. I didn't understand what was so funny. I took a shower in the morning and then later that day I played basketball and didn't want to feel sweaty when I went to bed and then since I went to bed I needed to shower in the morning. It made perfect sense to me. But she continued to insist that it was weird that I like to shower so much. I just like to be clean.

I think it is stems from not being able to shower or bathe whenever I wanted to and now that I can...I take full advantage of the opportunity. I don't want to just be clean, I want to feel clean. I enjoy the feeling and I'm not going to apologize if I shower more than the normal smelly boy.

After all, cleanliness is next to Godliness and smelliness just stinks....