Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 510, Taking a Shower or Bath.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 510.
I'm your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you so much for having me.
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This episode is a story about someone taking a shower or a bath.
When your body is dirty, you have to clean it.
And that's what we're going to do in this episode.
Let's get started.
I spent the day helping my friend Babbitt on his farm.
When I got home my wife said I ran the water, closed the shower curtain and adjusted the shower head.
I worked the soap into a lather and scrubbed from head to toe.
I rinsed off the soap and toweled off.
When I went back into the living room, my wife said, ''You still stink.''
You need to soak in a bath.
I went back into the bathroom, put the stopper in the bathtub, and turned on the faucet.
I didn't want to take any chances.
I took some of my wife's bubble bath and poured it into the bathtub.
When the bath was ready, I got in.
I soaked for a half hour and I washed every nook and cranny.
When I went back into the living room, my wife said, Wow, you smell as pretty as a flower.
That wasn't exactly what I was going for, but I'd rather smell like flowers than pigs.
Our story begins with me saying that I spent the day helping my friend Babbitt on his farm.
A farm is a place where you may have animals, you may be growing food in the ground.
It's a place outside of the city usually.
When I got home, my wife said, you stink.
The verb to stink is an informal way of saying that someone smells bad.
They have an unpleasant smell or an unpleasant odor.
Odor, O-D-O-R, is the same as smell.
So, when someone doesn't smell very good because they're dirty, you could say, you stink.
However, it's a very strong thing to say.
It's a very negative thing to say.
So, you would not want to say that to anyone that you didn't know very well.
We also use the verb to stink to mean to be poor at something, to not be very good at something.
I could say, I stink at chess, meaning I'm not a very good chess player.
But in this case, when my wife says that I stink, she means I smell bad.
So I headed straight for the shower.
To head for something is to go in the direction of.
When I say I headed straight for the shower, I mean I went directly to the shower.
I didn't do anything else first.
That's the meaning of the word straight here.
A shower is the part of the bathroom where you stand underwater to get clean.
You stand up and the water goes over you to clean you.
I say that I ran the water down.
To run the water means to turn the water on and usually wait until the water gets warm enough.
So to run the water means to turn the water on.
I ran the water and then I closed the shower curtain.
The shower curtain is a large piece of plastic that hangs around the shower, separates the shower from the rest of the bathroom to prevent the water from going outside.
Some showers have doors and you slide the door back and forth, often made of glass.
Other showers have a shower curtain.
A curtain is also a word we use to describe things that you put over your windows to keep the light out.
Those are also curtains when they're made of some kind of material, some kind of fabric.
I also adjusted the shower head.
The shower head is... the piece of metal that the water comes out of in a shower.
It's attached to a pipe in the wall where the water comes from.
And it's what sprays the water over you.
That is, it distributes the water over you.
That's the shower head.
I said that I worked the soap into a lather.
To work the soap means I did something to the soap.
In this case, I put the soap on my skin and I moved it back and forth.
I rubbed it until it was in the form of lather.
Lather, L-A-T-H-E-R, is when you have a lot of soap bubbles on your skin so that it looks white.
Or, for example, you could put soap on your hands and if you move them together very quickly, you will work the soap into a lather.
I scrubbed, meaning I rubbed very hard in order to get clean, from head to toe.
The expression from head to toe means from the top of your body, where your head is, to the bottom of your body, where your foot and toe are.
Your toes, of course, are the five little digits that come out of your foot.
Then I rinsed off the soap and toweled off.
To rinse something means to pour water on it, to usually get rid of the soap that you are using to clean something.
To rinse off means the same.
We use off here for emphasis.
It's very common in English to add a preposition like off after a verb to give it the idea of motion of action.
In this case, to rinse off means to put the water on me so that the soap, that solid or liquid substance that you use to clean something, goes off of my body.
So I rinsed off the soap and I toweled off.
To towel off means to take something to dry your body, what we call a towel, which is a big piece of fabric, of material that you use to dry something with.
To towel off is the same as to dry off, to take something and remove water from something else, in this case from my body.
When I went back into the living room after showering, my wife said, you still stink.
In other words, I did not get rid of all of the bad smell.
She says you need to soak in a bath.
To soak, S-O-A-K, here means to be covered in water for a long period of time.
Usually we do that to make something easier to clean.
So if you are cooking and you have a pan that is very dirty, you may put water on it or water in it and let the pan soak.
Use the water to help make the pan easier to clean.
So maybe an hour later you would come back and then clean the pan.
Well, here we're talking about soaking your body because it's so dirty.
And so you get into what we call a bathtub, which is a large, usually rectangular container in the bathroom that you can sit in or lie down in and put water over you.
I went back into the bathroom then and put the stopper in the bathtub.
The stopper is a small piece of metal or plastic that you put in the hole that is at the bottom of the bathtub or of a sink so that water can't flow out.
The water stays in the bathtub or the sink.
If you want to take a bath, you have to put a stopper there so that you have water inside the bathtub.
I turned on the faucet after that.
The faucet F-A-U-C-E-T is a long metal piece that is above the sink or bathtub that the water comes out of.
So to turn on the faucet means to allow the water to come out and fill up the bathtub.
I said I didn't want to take any chances.
I wanted to be sure I was going to be clean.
So I took some of my wife's bubble bath and poured it into the bathtub.
Bubble bath is a liquid that smells nice, that women sometimes or children put in their bath to make them smell nice.
It's not something that a man would normally do, but because I was so dirty, I wanted to make sure I smelled good.
When the bath was ready, then I got in.
I soaked for a half hour and And I washed every nook and cranny.
The expression nook, N-O-O-K, and cranny, C-R-A-N-N-Y, means small places.
But here, when we say I washed every nook and cranny, we mean you did 100% of everything.
You cleaned everything.
You might say, I was looking for my car keys because I lost them.
I looked in every nook and cranny of my house, meaning I looked everywhere.
So here we're saying that I cleaned every part of my body.
When I went back into the living room, my wife said, wow, you smell as pretty as a flower.
I say that that wasn't exactly what I was going for.
To go for, in this case, means what I wanted, what I intended, what I was trying to make happen.
I wasn't trying to smell pretty.
I was just trying not to smell bad.
To go plus a preposition is a very common term. expression in English.
Take a look at our learning guide for some more explanations of that, as well as the verb or the word soak.
I said I'd rather smell like flowers than pigs.
Remember, I was working on a farm, and so one of the animals that you have on a farm is a pig, which people think tends to smell badly.
Now that I'm all clean and smelling like a flower, let's listen to the dialogue again at a normal speed.
I spent the day helping my friend, Babbitt, on his farm.
When I got home, my wife said, You stink.
I headed straight for the shower.
I ran the water, closed the shower curtain, and adjusted the shower head.
I worked the soap into a lather and scrubbed from head to toe.
I rinsed off the soap and toweled off.
When I went back into the living room, my wife said, You still stink.
You need to soak in a bath.
I went back into the bathroom, put the stopper in the bathtub, and turned on the faucet.
I didn't want to take any chances.
I took some of my wife's bubble bath and poured it into the bathtub.
When the bath was ready, I got in.
I soaked for a half hour, and I washed every nook and cranny.
When I got back into the living room, my wife said, Wow, you smell as pretty as a flower.
That wasn't exactly what I was going for, but I'd rather smell like flowers than pigs.
The script for this episode was by someone who never stinks at writing scripts or any other way.
Dr Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2009 by the Center for Educational Development.
