Back When Hot Water Had to Think About It

By Mark Morgan, 

Special to The Waldron News

There was a time when you didn't just turn a faucet and expect hot water to come running like it had been standing behind the wall waiting on your personal invitation.

You turned the handle.

Then you waited.

You held your hand under the water and felt it go from cold, to not-quite-as-cold, to lukewarm, and finally—

"There it is."

Hot water.

And heaven help you if somebody had already taken a long shower.

Back then, the hot water tank only had so much kindness in it.

If you were the last one in line, you might start your bath comfortable and finish it feeling like you'd fallen into a creek in February.

Nowadays they've got instant hot water heaters.

No big tank sitting around keeping forty or fifty gallons hot all day. You turn on the faucet, and that little contraption goes to work right then and there.

Hot water on demand.

I reckon that's progress.

But a kid today would have a hard time understanding why some of us still holler, "Don't use all the hot water!" like there's a limited supply coming into town on a truck.

That's just something we were trained to worry about.

Bath time was different, too.

Somewhere along the way, somebody decided plain old soap and water wasn't enough for a kid.

We needed bubbles.

And not just a few bubbles.

We wanted enough bubbles to lose a rubber duck in.

That's where Mr. Bubble came in.

You'd pour that pink powder or bubble bath under the running water, and pretty soon that bathtub looked like somebody had filled it with shaving cream.

The commercials made it look like the happiest place on earth.

And for a little while, it was.

You'd make yourself a bubble beard, pile bubbles on top of your head, and holler for somebody to come look at you.

Nobody had to teach us that.

Apparently every child in America independently discovered the bubble beard.

Then came brushing your teeth.

We didn't have a toothbrush that charged overnight, blinked lights at us, timed us, vibrated, or told us we'd missed a spot.

We had a toothbrush.

That was the whole machine.

You supplied the power.

If it quit working, that usually meant your arm had stopped moving.

And Mom didn't need an app to know whether you'd brushed your teeth.

She had a better system.

"Let me smell your breath."

There wasn't much technology that could fool that.

Today we've got electric toothbrushes that can do more thinking than some of the appliances we grew up with. They'll buzz when it's time to move to another part of your mouth and shut themselves off when you've brushed long enough.

And you know what?

I like a lot of these new things.

I'm not interested in going back to running out of hot water halfway through a shower just to prove I had a good childhood.

Progress is a good thing.

But sometimes I wonder if all this instant convenience has taught us to expect everything else in life to be instant, too.

Instant hot water.

Instant answers.

Instant entertainment.

Instant delivery.

Instant results.

We don't like waiting anymore.

But some things still don't come on demand.

Trust doesn't.

Friendship doesn't.

Raising a child doesn't.

Building a good name doesn't.

And fixing something you've messed up sure doesn't.

Those things still take about as long as they ever did.

Maybe that's one little lesson hidden inside an old hot water tank, a box of Mr. Bubble, and a plain toothbrush.

We didn't call it patience back then.

We just called it waiting your turn.

And maybe learning to wait for the water to get hot wasn't such a bad lesson after all.

Because sooner or later, life puts every one of us at a faucet where turning the handle is the easy part.

The hard part is having enough patience to wait for the warm water to come.