"You're doing that wrong," my husband observed as I stepped out of the shower.
"When you squeegee the glass, you're going down and across. You need to go across and down. That will get rid of the most water and avoid streaks," he stated with authority. "It's called the Fan Method." Floor Mop With Squeegee
"There's a NAME for it?" I replied incredulously.
"I have a video I can show you to help you get the proper technique down, or I can loan you my copy of "Squeegeeing For Dummies," he continued.
"There's a BOOK on this?" I gasped. My husband nodded, took the squeegee from my hand, and stepped into the shower to re-squeegee my work.
I looked on in disbelief and realized that my husband had become a squeegee savant... and it was all my brother's fault.
As a California transplant, it wasn't all that surprising when my brother became an early adopter of what we called, a "squeegee lifestyle." He had a very modern apartment with a stone bathroom and a glass-enclosed shower, which, we were informed, he kept spotless and smudge free with a squeegee. At the time, this was a new concept in showers and something that was pretty foreign to the rest of us shower-curtain-owning Neanderthals.
None of us realized how complex the whole squeegeeing process was, actually, until my husband went out to L.A. for work and stayed with my brother. Unfortunately, due to my husband's less than stellar squeegeeing skills, he was forced to endure a series of very serious squeegee lessons over the course of several visits, which eventually resulted in him mastering the art of the squee, but also left him with a bad case of PTSD.
None of this would have been a problem, of course, since we, ourselves had 1950s style bathrooms with good old-fashioned pink bathtubs and matching floral shower curtains.
...Until we did a bathroom renovation and got a glass enclosed shower.
And now my brother had passed the torch, or rather, the squeegee, and it seemed my husband felt it was his duty to bring the squeegee manifesto into our home. Since I was not a master squeegee-er like my husband and brother, I could see that invariably, one of two things would happen. Either my husband would force me to meet his expectations of squeegee perfection, ensuring that our children would model our behavior and continue the survival of the squeegee fittest... Or I would buck the squeegee trend, word would get out, and I would end up a pariah of squeegee society.
I decided the squeegee madness stopped here.
"Hey there," I said to my brother on the phone. "I just read that you Californians are once again ahead of the home design curve."
"Oh really?" he replied enthusiastically. "In what way?"
"No more squeegeeing the shower doors. Water droplets and subtle streaks are the new IN look."
"Wow, great! I'll try that!" he exclaimed.
"Yeah," I said. "And make sure to tell my husband that when he comes to visit you next week."
Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.
Photo credit: Steven Ungermann at Unsplash
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