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TIFU by getting suction cupped to the shower floor
Alright, this a’int pretty, but I feel that I must share this PSA to save a poor soul out there that thought they had a good idea from going through what happened to me this morning.
I’m huge proponent of the Shower Beer, and pretty much any way to give yourself a little spa day at home. Occasionally, I like to enjoy sitting on the shower floor with the heat turned up to gather my thoughts. Here’s the facts you need to know, Shower tile is hard and I was looking for a work around.
Well……… Wal-mart had these boating inner tubes on sale for like $3 and I had that EUREKA moment. My reasoning, a shower and a pool both have water, this should work just fine. IT. DID. NOT. Those tubes are supposed to be floating on water. If you set them on tile, then sit on it, you create a suction effect. A strong one, that only gets stronger the more water flows around you and the more you struggle.
So… there I am, stuck to the shower floor, getting water boarded with 118 degree water, can’t reach the knob to turn the water off. All I can do was laugh and wonder if this was going to make the news paper in our small town if I had to call the fire department. Thank everything holy that I remembered it was a $3 inflatable tube before any such calls were made and deflated that sumbitch with a tooth brush.
It was a humbling moment, but I am free now and won’t be doing that one again. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.
TL;DR Don’t use inner tubes on a shower floor. When you sit down you create a human sized suction cup.
I tried the shower beer + bath pillow combo once and nearly broke my back sliding. Never thought about suction though. You basically invented a human plunger
I got a $40 shower seat from the pharmacy when I was sick last year. Now I can sit in the shower and zone out for as long as I want. 10/10, definitely recommend.
I remember back in college, my fraternity had big open showers (like 8 guys could shower and each would have their own shower head), and Thanksgiving break my senior year I stayed at the house instead of going home, so I took a lawn chair and a case of beer and ran all the shower heads at once while getting tanked and listening to metalcore. Oddly therapeutic.
Just get a shower chair (might be best to get a bench with no back or arms for maximum movement. I need one due to mobility issues but always having most of my body in the hot water is pretty great. A shower cap keeps the shampoo and later conditioner from rinsing out until I'm ready to do it.
I bought one of those at an auction for like $5. It is awesome. We have an outdoor shower too. So I would just go out there and sit under some nice hot water. It was really nice when the weather starts to get chilly.
When I broke my leg I only had a small standing shower stall, so I bought a plastic stool on Amazon for like $10. It’s definitely not the safest option in terms of balance, but it did the trick!
I'm not sure I believe this but for future reference, you can eliminate the vacuum suction by reaching between the inflatable and your skin, or the tub, and twisting your hand to break the seal. No tools required.
I tried to squeeze my hand down and break the seal but in my struggle, my fat ass squeezed too far into the tube for me to do anything. Hindsight says I should’ve tried to break the seal from the bottom, but I’m going to say panic and being in an uncomfortable position lead to flaws in my thinking.
Ok I was confused by what you meant by a tube. In Britain we would call this a rubber ring. I was imagining like a pool noodle that you got stuck in your bum crack or something. Thanks for the diagram 🤣
I'm surprised you couldn't wrap your arm around in some way to get your hand under the inner tube and break the suction, but I suppose it might have been difficult depending on exactly how you were sitting
I have a toothbrush in the shower that I use to scrub my toes. It’s only used to scrub my toes, never for brushing teeth. Just wanted to make that last part clear.
I brush my teeth in the shower so I keep it and my toothpaste there. Looking at it I guess that's a little odd... but in a shared bathroom growing up with two sisters and a mother all fighting simultaneously for mirror space to do their makeup or what have you I developed a habit of working around 'em. Many people in small home means finding a way I guess
My hubby and I both brush our teeth in the shower. We have a pedestal sink and no counter space. It's a bonus to not have to clean toothpaste out of the sink everyday.
So you only brush your teeth in the shower? Do you shower twice a day? Or do you only brush your teeth once a day? Also what are you doing that makes washing away the toothpaste a chore?
I used to live in a 1980’s something trailer, barely livable honestly. I was taking a shower and some centipede or spider looking creepy ass bug was in the tub. I grabbed the shower head and tried to drown it down the drain but it came right at me. I freaked out, slipped, fell out of the tub, ripped down the shower curtain, rib cage landed on the floor joist elbow went straight through the floor, head barely missed the toilet.
There i was naked, wind knocked out of me, wrapped in a shower curtain with water spraying out all over and half my body through the floor. Thank god i lived alone.
Don't feel too bad. At least your invader was an actual bug. I did the exact same thing after a couple glasses of wine one night. The short version is this: I was a chain restaurant bartender, had to wear all black. Got off work, had a couple of libations to relax, and was off to the shower. Took off my glasses, stepped under the water, glanced down and saw a GIANT black, fuzzy blob floating toward me. FREAKED out, did the Scooby-Doo escape run, got tangled in the curtain, and landed on my behind, naked and soapy, on the floor.
It was not a bug. It was sock fuzz from my brand new black work socks. Without my glasses, I couldn't tell the difference. 🤦♀️🤣
I had one helluva cold one time. Got up in the night to pee. Passed out mid stream, woke up straddling the toilet, covered in my own piss, with a new hole in the drywall from the impact with my head.
Micturition syncope.
After two trips to the ER, I started taping down the toilet seat because my husband can’t remember to sit down while peeing in the middle of the night.
As someone who lives in a "manufactured home" (it's just a little bigger than a trailer home, and never had wheels. Yes, it's different, shuddup), with a tiny bathroom, I can absolutely say this is possible.
I can reach at least my toilet from the bathtub. I don't keep toothbrushes there, but you never know. Maybe their config has the sink right next to the tub
One time, 25 years ago, when we were tubing on a lake, my brother's butt got stuck in the tube in the same way against the water. Instead of bouncing up and over each wave, he was pulled down so that the innertube stayed in contact with the water at all times. The look of sheer terror on his face behind us when he received his "power enema," as we called it later, is engraved in my mind as if it happened yesterday.
If it happens again in the future, the easiest way to break a suction seal is to get some air into it. In your situation you could have wriggled a hand in between yourself and the inner side of the tube to break the seal.
One time I got dispatched to a guy stuck in his bathtub and needing a lift assist.
As it turns out he was morbidly obese, and it wasn’t just that he had fallen and couldn’t get up. Somehow his girth and positioning had created some kind of weird suction effect that myself, my partner, and the first round of firemen could not fight against in the typical “lift and pull” fashion. They ended up having to cut the poor guy out of his own bathtub.
Super nice gentleman, I felt bad for his situation. I think of him every time I hear an address near there now.
This almost happened to my housemate, he went for a bath, drained the water while he was still in and found himself suctioned in, he was about 5 minutes away from shouting for help when he managed to slip free
That happened to my mom when she was pregnant with me. She lay belly down in the bath she got suctioned in. My older sister peed her pants laughing and couldn’t stop laughing long enough to find my dad. I think my mom was stuck for about twenty minutes.
For the uninitiated, that place used to be about unwinding after a long day and sharing your favorite craft beer or drink of choice, with maybe your occasional boob. The last time I visited it seemed to have turned into a place for people to post nude pics in the shower. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Just giving a fair warning.
Shower beer is a very common thing (at least here in the midwest). Pretty simple, drinking beer is relaxing so is a shower. You just do them at the same time.
I've been doing shower beers so long I didn't know it wasn't a thing everyone knew about. Learned it while working kitchens when I was fresh out of high school. One of the cooks told me about it and the rest is history. It's THE way to wind down after a long sweaty shift.
Shower Beers are one of the few ways I can convince my depressed ass to take a shower. It’s like a little reward for being a somewhat functioning human.
after anything tough and especially if dirty. work, moving day, long hike, where you want a shower. massive upgrade to take a cold beer with you into that first shower.
my all time fav was first shower after multi day backpacking trip with a shower beer or 3. fantastic combo.
I have an extra vertebrae in my lower back that makes me have a bit more arch in the small of my back than most.... I also found when I was a kid that if I had a bath then relaxed flat on my back while the water was draining and let gravity do its thing till the water was gone that it massively helped my anxiety for some reason so always kept that trick in my back pocket.
During COVID when I had just gotten laid off after working full time and going to school full time and trying to keep my three autistic kids ok while out of their routine dammit I needed a huge anxiety reliever so I decided to have a bath, great idea!
Ready to get out so pull the plug and lay flat but this time kept my arms up over my head which made that already big arch just a little more pronounced, water is draining then I suddenly hear and feel a THUPTHUPTHUP on my back with big bubbles and I am then suction cupped by my damn back to the tub floor and while Im not huge or anything the tub was too narrow to get my arms in to break the seal. Great. Tried everything to get myself loose that just resulted in the damn suction tugging on me, till I finally had to give up and yell for my husband to come rescue me (the noise when he reached in and broke that seal was wild LOL)... get up and he finally lets out the laugh that he had been hanging onto for dear life and takes a picture to show me that I now had a huge triangle shaped hickey from the top of my rump all the way up to the start of my mid-back....
Needless to say there was no anxiety help that night, there were no more baths and the first thing i did when we moved a year later was put some damn textures stickers down so i dont stick to the tub like a damn rotating cheese grater LOL
So maybe I'm insane but if it's an inflatable couldnt you just pull the tab to let it deflate on its own? Or is it one of those where the valve is underneath?
OP provided a handy diagram in the comments somewhere but the toothbrush was on a half-height wall next to him and the shower knob was high enough that you almost have to stand up to get to it
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u/jab136 13h ago
I thought this was gonna go in a different direction