A: To a lot of people the act of getting into the shower before turning the water on seems crazy. The water initially is either way too cold or way too hot. Why would anyone want to subject themselves to that first painful blast of water?
Do you realize that most bathroom related accidents happen while getting into and out of the shower? By getting into the shower before wetting everything down you have eliminated half of the danger! Of course, you still have to worry about exiting the shower. How do you reduce or eliminate the threat of slipping while going from the wet shower to the dry bathroom floor?
You could install nonslip surfaces on your floor, but that can be quite ugly and hard to clean. I recommend not entering your shower at all. You could bend over into the shower to wash your hair and then take a sponge bath from the sink. This would reduce the danger, but not eliminate it. There is still the chance of getting water on the floor which you could then slip in and crack your skull wide open.
The safest route available to us at this time is to fall back on ancient practices. The Romans had the right idea. Lightly apply oil to the skin. Just enough to cover the area you are working on without dripping. Then coat that area with fine sand. Now take a sharp edged stick and scrape the oil and sand from your body. This is an excellent way to remove dirt and exfoliate without any of the normal bathroom hazards.
It is hoped that in the future we will have sonic showers that use ultrasound technology to shake ourselves clean at the molecular level. But until that time we will have to make do with our ancestors’ best practices, or let death hold the shower curtain open for us as we risk stepping inside.
