We agreed we’d talk about showering with a broken arm. 

Well, we agreed I’d talk, you’d read. 

Yes, we did. 

Let’s just get something — as Aaron Sorkin might say — out on the step for the cat to lick up. 

I shower twice a day. 

Yes, I know that’s bad for your skin and blah, blah, blah. 

This is just the way it is. 

Arriving home from the hospital, I just wanted to scrub the ick of the day — and the emergency room — from my body. 

And mind, if we’re being honest. 

Standing before my stall shower, I contemplated how I could luxuriate beneath a boiling shower stream without getting the behemoth of a cast on my arm wet. 

The only strategy I could come up with was to disengage the shower head from its cradle, plant my feet just outside the stall, flip my hair, and shampoo it. 

Fortunately — or unfortunately, frankly — I am a master of this thanks to my husband’s family cabin in, well, the middle of nowhere.  

See, the cabin has the bizarre distinction of both having well water and never having hosted a blonde. 

Until I came along. 

The iron-rich well water turns my blonde locks into a pinky-red akin to a My Little Pony. 

So I take a jug of stream water sourced by my husband, stand on the cabin porch, flip my hair, and dump the stream water into my hair. 

Yes, even when it’s November. 

If you told me the best preparation for showering with a broken arm I’d ever receive would be from the cabin, I’d tell you it’s about time that cabin started paying me some dividends. 

Because I have been good to that cabin. 

Mostly. 

Anyway, after doing my cabin hair scrub in the comfort of my own bathroom, I stood at the sink, scrubbing myself with a washcloth. 

Which is not a shower and does not get you clean. 

It’s also incredibly cold. 

This was my routine for about three or four days. 

By then I’d had it. 

How do you rinse when you’re bathing at a sink? Wash your back? Shave?  

Heck, how do you even shave with ONE HAND?! 

I decided to get in the shower. I could leave the showerhead detached, to keep the almighty cast dry. But at least I’d be able to get water on my back, my good arm. 

And if the cast got wet? Well, I’d just cut it off. Drive myself to the hospital. I’d done it before. 

I would do it again if I had to. 

Well, I did spill almond butter oil on my cast, but that turned out to be not so bad. 

And yet, that casted arm had become quite the problem, beyond the shower troubles. 

The skin around the cast had taken on a sickly, yellow hue from the bruising. It had grown dry — from lack of bathing, lack of moisture, or both. It sagged like the loose skin of a decaying corpse. 

Listen, on a good day I’m pale and skinny. Growing up, my Italian friends’ moms would ply me with pasta, urging me to mange, mange! An Italian grandmother in my neighborhood, when I was born, asked what disease I had — I was that pale and sickly-looking. 

So having a moribund arm on my cachectic frame really did nothing for my overall look. 

One day, I took a chance. I hoisted the showerhead to chest level and aimed the spray at the exposed skin of my casted arm. 

Ha! It worked! I was able to rinse the shoulder and upper bicep without getting the cast wet. 

That I got it wet with moisture-stealing steaming water, well. 

We’ll pretend like that’s not true. 

Also, I did that daily until the cast came off. 

So there you have it. My secret, useless talent. Directing water at skin without getting a cast wet.  

Call me. I’ll help you out if you ever need it. 

If I could conquer that, I decided I’d work on the whole shaving thing.  

See, I couldn’t hold a razor with the hand of my broken arm. For starters, I didn’t want to risk rivulets of water running backwards into my cast. 

Also, I couldn’t hold a razor with that hand. 

At this point, the only thing I could hold with that hand was the reusable steel straw I use for my morning smoothie — and even that I could only hold loosely, between my index and middle fingers.  

So I was stuck shaving my right armpit with my right hand.  

I looked like a deranged primate. 

In more ways than one, because my razor was missing about 60 percent of that armpit. 

So. Skinny. Pale. Cast. Night of the Living Dead skin. Curls of hair growing like redwoods from my armpit. 

To quote Tone Lōc, I’ve got it going on, baby doll. And I’m on fire. 

There’s just one more thing.  

It has been seven weeks since I broke my arm. 

I still can’t wash my back. 

Oh, I can get it wet. 

But I don’t have the physical dexterity to use soap. 

I’m afraid to see what’s going on back there. 

That conjures quite the vision. 

I’ll bet you’re glad I talked now, aren’t you?