strangers, don't talk to me when I'm in the shower

My shower is my sacred place, and I’m not willing to share it with many people.

So, this morning while I was in my steamy sanctuary, a stranger’s voice was suddenly yelling at me, and my sanctuary was violated.

I don’t want to talk to a near stranger while naked. Period.

A couple nights a week, I stay at a co-worker’s house to eliminate some of my driving time. After a month of this, a friend of hers came back from Germany, and he’s also staying with her, which means I have a roommate. Our rooms are across the hall from each other, and we share a bathroom.

I don’t have many personal space phobias, and I don’t really care if I’m having a conversation with someone in the bathroom while I’m doing my make up or brushing my hair. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t take long to know that the bathroom is often a meeting place for members of my family and friends.

My shower is a little bit different. There have been instances where girl talk has transpired between myself and a sister, but those times are rare and involved someone who I didn’t mind talking to while shampooing my hair.

A practical stranger is different.

I was jarred out of my showering-thought-process by a man’s garbled voice in a stringy sentence of which the only thing I distinctly heard was my name.

I’m not really sure what the protocol is in this situation. Shut off the water? Ask for a repeat? Tell him I didn’t hear him? Prematurely end my shower and greet him in a towel to see what he wants?

I couldn’t figure out what was so important that he had to yell at me through a locked bathroom door while I was in the shower.

“Have a good day, Holly.” Our relationship doesn’t call for that.
“Be sure and set the alarm before you leave, Holly.” That’s obvious.
“I’m not going to lock the front door when I leave, Holly.” I don’t need to know that.
“I’m going to my girlfriend’s house, Holly.” Newsflash I couldn’t have lived without.
“I have beer chilling in the fridge, Holly. Help yourself tonight.” That might have called for interrupting my shower.

I yelled back, “Okay.”

And then he was gone, and I was left thinking about how I don’t like being talked to by strangers when I’m in the shower. And that I should blog about it.

So I did.