It rained like crazy here for the past few days, with winds up to 110 mph in some places, and we had the usual rivers in the streets and cars crushed by downed trees. This served to remind me of a few short months ago, when the Southland had record-breaking rainfall, and the whole city seemed to be underwater. It was back then, when all our cars were drowning, that the apartment complex I live in decided to implement the new water-saving faucet and shower heads. Isn’t it always like that? We can’t step outside without risking drowning, but it’s time to save water indoors! Yay!
Okay, so the kitchen sink faucet head is fine: it’s less water volume, but it’s still reasonable enough; and the bathroom sink faucet head is I suppose reasonable enough: it crimps off the volume of water ridiculously, but it increases the water pressure to such an extent that it can still blast the toothpaste off of your toothbrush and sandblast the stubble out of your razor head, so long as you don’t mind everything splattering all over the room and your shirt. So you can brush your teeth with your shirt off; no big deal (unless you forget!). But you can learn to get used to it, even if it does seem a little bit dumb. Okay, maybe a lot dumb. Most of the water seems to get flushed down the toilet and spray around in the dishwasher, but there is no retrofitting for them. Fine, whatever; still I can live with it. But the shower head is a problem.
I don’t really demand so much from a shower head. Most of them probably don’t even think I’m a jerk or anything (even though I am!). I just need them to wash the soap and shampoo off of me in a timely fashion. I don’t need them to massage me or ‘take me away’ or anything like that. Just one simple thing: wash the soap off, please. But this new shower head, it’s not very enthusiastic about its job. My old shower head was all full of lime scale and crap, and so I figured that it couldn’t really get any worse than it already was when they put the new one in. Well, I was more wrong than I usually I am. This shower head seems to view the morning rush with contempt and disdain. “Want to wash the soap off? Well, you’re going to have to wait until I’m good and ready.” This is the mantra of the new shower head. The water here is good and hard, so washing soap off is no problem; well, no problem if you get to have any water to wash it off with. It literally takes a half an hour for me just to wash the shampoo out of my thinning, short hair and get the soap off of my body each time I take a shower. That’s like five or six times longer than it used to take, and I’ll bet it’s using even more water to do it! I can’t imagine what it’s like for a woman with thick, long hair, or like for a guy who’s in an 80s hair-metal cover band! (Maybe they wear wigs now.) I have skin allergies, so I have no choice: I get a rash if I don’t get the soap off. And how about the shampoo? Well, at first, I’d just rinse my head off of the shampoo and get out of the shower, but then I noticed that I was getting white flakes of dandruff in my hair (!). I’ve never had dandruff before, so I was a little shocked. So when I noticed it, I put a little water on my hand to try to remove it with, and do you know what happened? That’s right: my hair sudsed all up! It wasn’t dandruff at all, but evaporated shampoo still in my hair! Holy crap! I’ve never had that before! So now I have to spend time actually actively rinsing my hair out with my hands for many minutes until it starts squeaking all over before I can be sure that the shampoo is coming out. I mean really! Like I don’t have enough to do! And do you know what else? The shower head limits its output by forcing the water supply through such a tiny little passageway that it actually heats the water up until it’s boiling hot! I’m not kidding; you can no longer take a cold shower anymore: it’s impossible! And mark my words: this will lead to more sexual harassment in the workplace, if guys can’t take a cold shower! (I’d love to see the first guy who tries to use that as an excuse!) Meanwhile, every time it drowns this city in flood waters, it’s just swept away directly out to sea, and they don’t even try to store any of it anywhere! All this while we can’t even get wet in our own showers!
Well, if this kind of mandated conservation is what we have to look forward to, I think our future looks awfully dim! You know why? Because it takes five minutes for those damn CFLs (the new light bulbs: compact fluorescent lamps) to warm up enough to actually light up a room! (And then they burn out in just a couple of months, regardless of what the packages and government lackeys say!) I’m all for saving water, especially in a growing metropolitan area where it’s becoming more and more scarce. But seriously, we’re not allowed to take a real shower anymore, when most of the city’s water is going to water neighborhood association-mandated lawns? Why don’t we just make a new rule that says you can replace (or must replace) your water-guzzling lawns with Japanese pebble gardens or cactus landscaping? Or how about just green-painted pavement or Astroturf? Then maybe we could take a decent shower! (Doesn’t sound like fun? Oh well. I'm sorry, but I feel like your right to mandate a lush, beautiful lawn in the desert ends when I can’t wash the shampoo out of my hair!) I’m telling you, the future is going to look just like a Mad Max movie, only instead of oil and gasoline, we’re all going to be fighting to the death over the last decent shower heads and light bulbs. You’ll see!
