This may have misled you slightly. You may be under the impression I am about to unveil to you the secret of the perfect bath. I am not. I am here to describe the bizarre oddity that is…a cold bath. All your life you have most likely been subjected to nothing but cosy warm perhaps a little too hot baths. As such, when presented with a cold bath, you have a conditioned response of simply,
“Ooh, I’m not getting into that.”
I, being the crazy kind of guy that I am, thought, what the hell, and plunged in. I promise you, if you follow suit, you will sit there thinking why in God’s name did I just do that? You will sit there shivering, shaking your legs in a desperate attempt to warm up, thinking I bloody hate being cold, but also thinking well you have gone this far and you begin sterning yourself for the ultimate test, which is of course, the lowering of the torso. Come oooon, if you don’t do it, you say to yourself…you’re a chicken ****. There is nothing like self encouragement. So once again, for no real apparent reason, aside from the fact I had to go to Uni and had the need for a wash but not the time to run the bath again,(not that I would, being anti-waste of course) - I eased my naked torso into the chilling depths of the bath tub.
What happens next may or may not happen for you. But it happened for me. A vision of the Antarctic, (obviously having never been there, it was just the stereotypical ice mass and icebergs floating in the sea) miraculously appeared in my mind. I suddenly thought to myself, why am I feeling like this? There is no natural reason for me to feel ridiculously cold, because I know for a fact this isn’t doing me any physical harm… so why am I viewing it as a bad thing? The second that I thought that I thought about a sea lion, quite specifically a sea lion believe it or not, how they must feel the chill, and yet they live with it; they are naturally designed to be cold. For possibly about 4 seconds, I let myself go into my vision, I lowered my head into the water and I threw on some of my Lynx “Glacier Water and Deep Sea Mint” shower gel and rubbed it on my chest for added effect. For a moment, all of my senses told me I was a sea lion. I felt it, I smelt it and I could see it in my head. You might not think that is much to have the memory of a moment where you felt like something else, but think back to any major events, can you remember more than just a few key moments of them off the top of your head? I now have the memory of where I was a sea lion for a moment. If you want that feeling, the only thing I can suggest is that you go run yourself a cold bath. Right now. Just a last passing thought I had as I clambered out of the bath tub, I took a moment and thanked God. As I clutched and gripped two towels and my dressing gown to my freezing skin, I thanked God that I’m not a ****ing sea lion.
