Peach Soda & SuzyQ's

My brother devised an ingenious plan to avoid losing skin off our feet in the bathtub. He suggested turning the hot water as high as humanly possible just prior. Sauna time baby! We were freaking geniuses! So we secretly put our plan into action. After a few dry runs of this, we noticed that method seriously limited our actual shower time. My brother was a germ-a-phobe, therefore his showers were longer than anyone else on the planet. His shower time equated to the average of three people. Steam from his shower would literally seep from under the door and into the hallway. Occasionally the family dog would take advantage of the steam cleaning. Again, my age put me at a significant disadvantage. My shower was a daily gamble against time! There was absolutely nothing worse than the water going cold on you while shampooing your hair. The fear became reality as the slow loss of comfortable water temperature began. The gamble started at that exact moment. Do you turn the knob slightly in attempt of saving temperature? Do you just rush to finish cleaning? There was absolutely no way to predict how much time you had. And you had to only hope that someone did not use the kitchen sink at the same time. Why hasn’t someone figured out a way to put a damn timer on a hot water tank to alert you on remaining hotness? You couldn’t look into the hot water tank to see how much remained. Based on the warning labels, it wasn’t advised to shake the tank. Apparently pressurized cylinders exploded when tampered with. It was always a crap shoot! You better hope that your early warning system was fully active. Any slight change in temperature must be noted and the exit plan executed quickly. I once heard my brother screech as if he was practicing his best Michael Jackson. After hearing the horrid sound I decided to go to school that day a little tart. I was not risking the loss of a toe to frostbite in name of personal hygiene. “Hey, I figured out a way to make water heat faster” my brother said ecstatically. “How is that? What are you talking about?” “I went downstairs and looked at that round thing in the kitchen with all the pipes coming from it” said so elegantly as if he rehearsed for hours. “You mean the water heater?” Give him some credit! After all he was a product of a slow evolutionary progression, one of the Neanderthal’s best. However, he seemed to be onto something, a partially intelligent thought that might benefit me as well. I was willing to listen to his plan, if only briefly. The plan also was of interest to me since it was “HIS” plan. In the event of catastrophic failure there’s less chance for severe punishment to me. Admittedly, I was also kind of tired of the “oh-so-tart” feeling in the morning. I did not much enjoy smelling myself by lunch time. “So what are you talking about exactly?” I asked cautiously, purposely avoiding entrapment. “That tank thing has fire under it. I think if we can get the fire higher then it will make the water hotter!” “Don’t we need the water to stay hotter longer, not hotter in general?” I asked with a scientific look upon my face. His face appeared as if I said “Brain turn off now”. For one long, awkward and silent minute he was a dull statue. His facial expressions were lifeless! His cheeks lost slight color and slumped. His furrowed eyebrow complimented the deep nothingness in his eyes. He stood with his mouth wide open as if he was pelican waiting for a fish to leap out of the water into certain digestion. No eye movement, no blinking, not even a facial twitch. His brain just turned off! I actually disabled my brother’s central nervous system from a mere question. I became concerned that I may have killed him. Oh crap, I do not know cerebral CPR! How do you turn a brain back on? “Let’s just make the fire bigger. It’ll work!” he said with a confident stutter, immediately coming alive from his frozen state. At that moment, after his brief mental vacation, I realized why he was a Neanderthal. He was not “the” missing link, he was missing a link.