The following is an opinion piece written by Spc. Dana Perkins, with contributions from her roommate, Pfc. Tiffany Tagaev, after the shower in their wet CHU broke.
CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait — You know, it was really nice of Sgt. Smith to let us use his shower. Don’t you agree? I feel totally, completely refreshed, and cleaner than I have since I arrived in country.
After the pipe outside our CHU broke, like, surgically, as if done by a band saw instead of meteors like Sgt. Smith said it was, I was heartbroken. I despaired of feeling clean ever again, for like three days until the maintenance crew could get over here to fix it. But then Sergeant Smith knocked on our door and offered to let us use his shower.
God bless him.
I honestly hadn’t even thought about it. Had you? I thought maybe we’d just wait a couple days to shower, until our pipe was fixed. It’s not like we get that sweaty anyway. We sit in a dark TOC trading gossip on mIRC all day. And honestly, I haven’t been going to the gym all that much since I realized I can gain twenty pounds here and all the guys will still want to put it in my guts.
But then Sgt. Smith reminded me: why feel all gritty and grimy? And sure enough, he was a perfect gentleman. I went to bring over my pink mesh shower caddy full of loofahs, pomegranate exfoliating body wash and my pumice stone, but Sgt Smith already had it ready. He really is just making it so easy. He had a bunch of that stuff — my brand, even! — already in his shower. His CHU was clean and he had some potpourri going in there with some Sade playing on his boombox.
Not sure how he even knew our shower was broken. But nevermind about that.
He even had one of those detachable showerheads that you can use to … you know. You know. And after that glass of white wine he gave us when we got in there, before he left to “give us our privacy,” I have to admit, I … well, I may have made good use of that showerhead. While Tiffany had like three whole glasses of the wine, right Tiff? Haha!
Honestly, it felt so good that I didn’t stop even when I heard some idiot from the next CHU yelling about “adjusting the f-stop” or some stupid thing. And I totally forgot being annoyed that I tripped over all his video equipment when I entered the CHU.
So: I feel totally refreshed, relaxed, and re-energized. I sure am glad Sergeant Smith let us use his shower. I’ll really be sad to go back my own. Don’t you agree?
You know, I hadn’t paid that much attention to Sgt. Smith before, but this has really made me feel like he’ll be a great friend. I think sometime soon, I might take him up on his offer to walk me back from the gym, even if I feel bad making him wait outside the ladies locker room/tent afterwards.
Duffel Blog reporter blondesoverbaghdad contributed to this article.
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