Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

I often wash my hair in the bath, which involves closing my eyes, leaning forwards and submerging my head under the water.

Since I obviously do this alone, beforehand I take the plug out, just in case I unexpectedly pass out or something. In such an unlikely event, the water should drain completely from the bath. It's only sensible.

Sometimes, after sitting up and breathing again, I wonder whether I've actually sat up, or have merely passed out underwater and dreamt that I have sat up.

How do you tell whether or not you are in a dream? For me, dreams often involve something surreal happening, which I will think is perfectly normal. So I have to second guess myself, and objectively challenge a few aspects of the very ordinary bathroom around me. Is the shampoo bottle singing? If it is, can I recall it ever having done this before?

This morning I surfaced my head as usual and noticed that the bath water was still running out of the tap and into the bath. The bath had become overfull, and the excess water was now piling-up higher than the edge of the bath. The surfeit mass of wobbly water had a hard wall to it, so none of it had spilt over yet.

Clearly this was impossible. Clearly I was dreaming. Clearly I had to wake up very very quickly indeed.

I tried to sit up again. Well, I thought I was already sitting up so it was difficult to straighten up further. I tried to wake up. I couldn't.

I figured the water in real life would be just above my head, so I tried to perceive that, and after partial success began to focus on lifting myself up above the water level again.

Anyway, almost immediately, I did wake up. In my bed. It actually had been a dream.

The whole thing had been a dream.

Hence the phrase, to die bathing.