The Mystery of the Shower Curtain Rings

Let’s take this post up a notch and try to keep things playful today. Yesterday’s post took a long time to write and it was mentally draining. Today’s a new day and the sun is shining. All is good – for the time being.

What’s nice about yesterday’s post though is that I received two comments and an email from my lifelong friend, Anthony. Anthony’s a great guy and someone I am confident I can rely on for the rest of my life. We’ve known each other since first grade and I can still remember sitting next to him on the school bus, as he was barking out makes and models of every single car that passed. To this day, I wonder how he did that. He was only a few years old. Where he conjured up the knowledge of every car ever built remains a mystery. Anyway, thank you for the comments and keep them coming. I absolutely love reading reactions to what I write here.

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I’ve been having a real issue every time I take a shower. It’s not the water quality or the bathtub or the temperature or the lighting. What’s bothering me are those little round rings that hold the shower curtain to the shower rod.

When we first moved into this house, I purchased a new shower curtain. If memory serves, we tried to take the curtain we bought a long time ago from the Connecticut house to transition to our current house. When we removed it from the rod up there, we discovered it was far too gross to pack up with our belongings. I believe it was the water stains that put me over the edge. While these things hang in the shower, they look alright – it’s not until you pull them down and really get a good look at them that you find out you’re better off without them. Disposable they are.

So, when we pulled into town down here, one of the first things we did was to run out to Home Depot to pick up two brand new shower curtains. I think we needed rods as well, but I’m pretty sure we already had the rings. We had multiple sets of shower rod rings follow us from house to house through our long history. Clear ones, maroon ones and blue ones. The clear ones are the best because they’re fairly interchangeable and match with just about anything.

The thing is, and as I write this I’m discovering that this post is much about nothing, the clear shower curtain rings are faulty. So faulty and shady, that it’s almost a mystery as to what goes on.

Every time I take a shower, I pull the curtain open, get in and then pull the curtain closed again. It’s pretty straightforward. When I do this, the rings seem just fine. They are closed loops that do what they’re supposed to do, which is hold the shower curtain up.

Now, here’s the weird thing – when I’m done with my shower, I look up at the rings as I pull the curtain open again and I swear, about three or four of the rings that were once closed and holding the curtain up, have somehow opened up and are no longer doing their jobs. Odd.

Last night, I pulled a few rings off the rod and brought them into Laura so she can take a look at them. I explained to her what was happening and she asked if they were the “snap” type ones that, once closed, stayed closed. She grabbed a ring from my hand, played with it for a while and said, “Bob, these rings suck.” She doesn’t mince words.

Obviously, they aren’t the snap type rings, but even worse, they hardly close at all. One piece fits into the other piece, but there’s no pressure or clasp to keep things where they’re supposed to be. With this in mind, I went into the garage for a little experiment.

I pulled out my torch and got a nice flame going. I wanted to see if I could melt one small area of a ring and bend it in such a way that when it dried and hardened again, it would create some sort of of tension when it was closed. After a while of playing, I accomplished what I set out to accomplish and brought the result into Laura for her inspection.

She didn’t say anything. As I handed her the ring, she just looked at me and made me wonder what I was trying to do. I grabbed the ring back from her and told her that the only thing I could do with my frustration was to write a nice long blog post about my experience. Here it is and as I’ve already mentioned once, what you’re reading is just some rambles. I supposed I’ve got to now throw one more disposable item away to purchase another. Like I shouted from the kitchen last night, “I wish I could just buy one set of shower rod rings that would last me the rest of my life! That, and ice cube trays!”