I’d like to amend or expand upon my three-year-old “Losers and Long Showers” observation. It hit me earlier today that I was being too specific when I wrote that taking long showers “is a sign of weak character” and that “anyone who does this is a soft sister — a person looking to hide inside the warm amniotic fluid of his mother’s womb.” What I really meant is that hiders and losers don’t just waste time taking long showers — they spend lots of time in bathrooms.

So the new rule (and I’m not trying to be provocative for the sake of page views — I really feel this is true) is that the more bathroom time you put in on a daily basis the more afraid you are of the occasional sting and chill of life.

Of all the rooms in any home or apartment the upstairs or bedroom-adjacent bathroom is the ultimate “leave me alone, I need some time to myself” room, just as kitchens are the ultimate “let’s all hang together and suss things out as a family” room. It’s clearly a healthier thing if a person is more of a socially gregarious kitchen person than a morose bathroom hider. I’m just saying I’m aware of the bathroom metaphor every time I walk into one, and so I try to cut my bathroom time as much as possible, which is why I always take spartan, F. Lee Ermey-type showers lasting no longer than three or four minutes.

Three years ago: “[My long-showers] realization goes back to when I was in my early 20s. If I happened to notice that a roommate or some guy or girl who was staying over was taking ten- or twelve-minute showers (or worse), I would instantly write them off. A strong attachment to feelings of liquid warmth and serenity in a bath or shower is definitely a womb0trip thing, and being neurotically attached to prolonging or extending that experience as much as you can means you’re a loser, plain and simple.

Unless, that is, you’re taking a longish shower in order to unleash your creative juices, which is a different thing. Great ideas come to me in the shower so I get that. So long X-factor showers are acceptable or at least tolerable (i.e., you’re still wasting water) while long loser showers are not.

“Those who take extra-long hot showers are the same people who take extra-long breaks or lunches in order to get away from office drudgery, or who hide away inside an alcoholic or nicotine or drug cave. Your average enterprising, disciplined, hard-working types take four- or five-minute showers, at the longest. If you’re really hard-core you’ve finished in less than three. No exceptions, no excuses — either you get it or you don’t.”