HARRODSBURG, KY—Moments after he mistakenly turned the shower knob in the wrong direction, local man Dennis Rowley confirmed Thursday that sometimes in this life, things have to get worse before they can get better.
The shivering 27-year-old, who reportedly jerked back and yelled “Oh, God! Oh, God! Cold, cold, cold!” when the unexpected burst of icy water hit his nude body, remarked that the bad times, although difficult to cope with, make one all the more grateful for the good times.
“It can be hard, in our moments of despair, to see that pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel,” said Rowley, expounding on his conviction that the darkest hour comes just before the dawn as he cowered against the shower curtain and frantically fumbled to adjust the temperature of the frigid stream. “But we must persist, for it is not the challenges in life that define us, but the way in which we respond to them.”
“Besides, would we ever truly appreciate warmth without the cold?” Rowley added, contorting his body and covering his genitals to avoid contact with the water.
Sources confirmed that Rowley, whose repositioning of the showerhead only succeeded in splashing water onto the bathroom floor, then turned his thoughts to how life will always find something new to throw at you, and true contentment can only be attained by those who learn to take the bad with the good. While he by no means denied that it was a struggle trying to dodge the piercingly cold spray, he stated that he took solace in the realization that a time would come when he would once more experience the comfort of warm water.
“At the end of the day, what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger,” said Rowley, who overcorrected as he turned the knob to left, bringing down a scalding, painfully hot torrent that he attempted to duck beneath by lunging to the front of the shower. “Oh, how the wheels of fortune spin and spin, favoring the pauper one day and the king the next.”
“Que será, será,” he continued, his skin turning red as he crouched near the drain and tried to make himself as small as possible.
According to sources, while observing that life is all about balance and the yin cannot exist without the yang, Rowley proceeded to tilt the shower nozzle upward to redirect the blistering heat, and he again adjusted the temperature. After he extended his foot to test the water and screamed, “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, fuck!” upon finding it still too hot, the man reportedly began to contemplate further the recurring cycle of peaks and troughs that constitute our delicate existence in this world.
“There is no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bear witness that we had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer,” he said, this time twisting the knob too far to the right, which caused him to endure another downpour of bracingly cold water and wrap his arms around himself in a futile attempt to keep warm. “It is a tale told by every sparrow’s call, every drop of rain, and every gust of wind. Life. Death. The cycle never ends.”
“But alas,” Rowley added as he finally got the temperature right after a nearly minute-long endeavor, “there is transcendence.”
At press time, Rowley, who reportedly forgot his towel and was forced to run to his bedroom naked while dripping water everywhere, concluded that it is man’s destiny to suffer, and existence itself is one great cruel and meaningless joke.
