An old dog and some tricks

I might never say it out loud but in my internal narrative, I would tell you that I am plagued by dirty bathtubs. Every apartment I have ever moved into has a dirty bathtub. Perhaps the bathtub was not disgusting, painted-in-shades of yellow when I moved in but by the time I left, it was a stained, horrendous, sticky-footed mess. The state of my bathtubs has been a source of private shame. I pull the shower curtain when I have visitors. I exclaim loudly about the state of Montreal apartments to all who will listen.

Please understand, I am not a pig. I have spent hours, ok, minutes, at a time, scrubbing away at grimy bathtubs. I have used fluorescent orange products flogged by bald muscle-men. I have emptied boxes of Ajax, hoping that those magical blue granules would somehow dig a hole to the enamel below. I have soaked my tub in bleach, vinegar, baking soda, dish-soap. You name it, I have tried it.

This being my own, half-conscious narrative, I blamed it on the water, the tub itself, the lack of proper cleaning products or some unexplained tub cleaning technique that everyone else had cottoned onto but that I never learnt. I had mainly given up on solving the dirty bathtub situation except for a half-hearted swipe every now and then. The dirty bathtub thread takes up little space in my ongoing inner analysis of everything and anything. Only when I sit on the toilet and am obliged to take in the ever darkening circle of hell that is my bathtub, do I contemplate my failure to figure this one out, one of life's great mysteries.

A recent coincidence of events has changed everything.

First, sitting on the toilet, staring at the tub, I asked myself, "what do other people do?" Because I have looked and most friends', strangers' and clients' bathtubs are cleaner than mine. Second, my mother having a surfeit of metal pot scrubbers, left one by my sink one recent afternoon. And then, friends, the Eureka moment.

Today after work, I cleaned my tub with the metal scrubbie. And like that, it was clean, gleaming, pristine, glowing.

Jesus, it took me long enough.