I have no idea when or why, but at some point in my youth, my overactive imagination — probably triggered by the slightly hollow echoes produced when stepping into the shower — seized upon the idea that there was no actual support structure underneath the bathtub. The tub was only connected to the house at the edges where you could see it caulked to the wall, and underneath there was only a vast, gaping chasm. I was terrified that at any point during a bath or shower, the caulking would give way, or the bottom of the tub would drop out, and I’d go plummeting into the depths of the earth.
Of course, this is very silly.
But even now, every so often during a shower, I’ll get a slightly nervous tingle in my psyche, and quickly check the seams around the tub to make sure that there are no obvious cracks…
iTunes: “Inski” by Critters Buggin’ from the album Guest (1994, 3:11).