Thinking back, Brianna wasn't sure where it all started. She couldn't exactly remember her first bath but she was quite sure she didn't enjoy it.
    "You're a little girl," her mother always said, "and little girls are supposed to be clean and dainty."
    Brianna was not dainty and, if she had her choice, she couldn't be clean, either. Out of the whole week, bath time was the worst. Oh, every household has rules. You must have some sort of rules to get along. But there was one rule that made no sense to Brianna.
    "Honey," her mother said, "you know you need a bath each night before bed. You know that."
    At first it didn't seem like such a big deal. Her mother was always there to get the bath water just right and to help her if she needed it. But later, by the time Brianna was seven years old, she was expected to take her bath by herself. Each night. Before bed. And that's when it started.
    At first she just skipped washing her hair. She got it wet all right, but she just didn't use the shampoo. And then pretty soon she stopped soaping up her feet. Her mother certainly wouldn't take the time to sniff her feet before bed.
    About a month later she stopped washing her arms because they didn't really get that dirty. Oh, she still ran the bath water and she still got in the bath tub and sometimes she even took a shower, but the bar of soap was hardly touched at all.
    "Time for your bath," her mother said one night.
    "Do I really have to take a bath, mom? I mean, I'm not dirty at all. You keep the house so clean I don't have to worry about getting dirty while I'm around here."
    "Why, thank you, Brianna," her mother said. "That's a very nice complement about my housekeeping. But, yes, you still need to take a bath each and every night before bed. That's just one of our rules around here and I expect you to observe that rule."
    A few days later, Brianna was helping her grandfather dig worms for his fishing trip. Of everyone who had to follow rules, her grandfather disliked rules the most.
    "Well," he said, "let's face it, Birdy. You're a tom boy."
    He called her Birdy because he thought Brianna sounded too much like fancy cheese.
    "Pop Pop," she said, "did you have to take a bath when you were a kid?"
    "Sure," he said as he turned over a spadeful of soft, moist dirt and searched for worms. "I had to take a bath now and then. But you know what? I hated them, too."
    "Well, what should I do?"
    "Oh, I don't know. I don't think it's my place to advise you on that. I mean, your mother wants you to take a bath and, well, I guess you've got to work that out between yourselves. If you were my daughter, well . . ."
    "But my mom is your daughter," Brianna said, "and she loves to take baths."
    Brianna grabbed a wriggling worm and dropped it in the bucket.
    "Yep," he said, "so I guess it doesn't make sense. I tried to raise your mom as a tom boy, but it didn't take. But you're a smart girl. You can figure something out."
    That's about when Brianna started skipping the soap and the shampoo. She had lots of time to think about what her grandfather had said. You can figure outsomething. And so, each night at bath time, Brianna kept cutting back. Finally she wasn't using any soap at all. She wasn't even running the bath water. She would just sit in the bathroom and read a book for fifteen minutes. But that didn't work.
    "Honey," her mother said one night, "you need to use more shampoo. That bottle had been in the bathroom for months now. Be sure and lather up good or I'll have to help you."
    So each night she poured a cap full of shampoo down the drain.
    "Honey," her mother said, "you probably need a clean towel, don't you? You haven't had a clean towel in a long time. You are using your towel, aren't you?"
    And so each night Brianna took her towel and rubbed it over her arm, ran a little water in the tub and then wiped out the tub with the towel to make sure the towel was slightly damp.
    It all seemed to be working. Brianna hadn't had a bath in over six weeks but as far as anyone else knew, she was clean as a whistle each night. And all of this proved her point: she didn't really need a bath.
    A few days later, Brianna's mother kissed her on top of her head.
    "My goodness, Honey," she said. "I need to get you a different kind of shampoo. Your hair doesn't smell that good. What kind of shampoo do you want?"
    "Oh, it doesn't make that much difference," Brianna said. "Anything is fine."
    And so, instead of taking a real bath each night, Brianna poured a capful of shampoo down the drain, ran a little water in the tub and wiped it out with her towel, put a couple drops of shampoo in her hands and then rubbed it around in her hair so her hair smelled more like shampoo. It was almost as much work as taking a real bath.
    "Honey," her mother said one night, "you need to use that bar of soap a little more often. I can't remember the last time I got a new bar for you. Are you sure it's getting used enough? And your arms need to be washed more, too."
    So each night, in addition to everything else, Brianna took the bar of soap and held it under the faucet. Then she rubbed a little—just a tiny fraction of a sliver of soap—on her arms just so they would smell like soap when she finished.
    "Honey, are you using a washcloth?" her mother asked. "How come I never see a wet washcloth when you're done in the bathroom?"
    "Pop Pop," Brianna said to her grandfather one day while she was helping him clean off the lawn mower, "this bath thing is getting out of control. I mean, I took your advice and now it takes more time to not take a bath than to take one."
    "What advice was that, Birdy?" he asked.
    "Don't you remember?" she said. "You told me to figure it out for myself. Well, I did."
    And she told him how she had avoided taking a bath for two months.
    "So that's what I smelled," he joked. "I'll tell you what. You're still going to need to take a bath now and then. I mean, there's nothing you can do about that. But here's a little more advice: make sure you really need one. Come on with me."
    They walked around to the back of the house where the garden had been and her grandfather took the hose and sprayed down some bare dirt.
    "Now get in there and get yourself all muddy," he said.
    "Can I? Can I really do that?" she asked with a smile on her face.
    Brianna looked like a pig as she jumped into the mud, splashed around and then dove face first into the slop. In a few minutes she stood up, covered in mud.
    "Do you want to take a bath now?" her grandfather laughed.
    "I do!" she yelled. "I want to take a real bath and really get clean."
    Her hair was caked with mud. Her face was painted with it. There was no way she could have ever been more dirty.
    "Well, we'd better start out here," Pop Pop said. "I'll hose you off and then you can go take a nice, hot bath and really enjoy it this time. And tell your mom everything you've been doing for the past couple months. Tell her you don't want to take a bath every night. I suspect she'll listen if you're honest with her, Birdy."
    And Brianna did just that. And her mom laughed and laughed when she heard everything her daughter had done to avoid taking a bath.
    "Honey," she said to Brianna, "I used to do that, too. Maybe we need to change that rule. How about you take a bath when you get dirty and when you think you need one. Is that going to work for you?"
    It worked quite nicely for Brianna. And that is how she learned the secrets of the bath.