I was showering the other day and noticed on the shampoo bottle the encouragement to turn off the water while soaping. I got to thinking about how ridiculous this was. Even in America, your hot water heater may not always get you the water exactly as you want it, and many showers have a separate hot and cold handle. So, you’re asking me to turn off this delicate balance of just the right temperature to “save” a little water? Let me turn this up a little overseas notch. Our water heater didn’t work quite right (and we had it pretty good as overseas, non-first-world-living goes), so to get our shower to keep from going scaling-freezing-scalding, we had to turn on the radiator in the bathroom, turn on the hot water to the sink just right and adjust the shower just so. There’s no way I’m upsetting this balance, just to get burned and frozen in succession while trying to get it back cause I wanted to “save” a few gallons – less than the ones which are wasted as I hide in the corner of the shower trying not to get burned or frozen after I soap without water.
This just goes into the list of silly things America is concerned about. Thankfully, this one doesn’t make our life a little absurdly more difficult like car seat laws (really, we’re going across a tiny town, getting in and out of the car seat took longer than the drive, all of our parents and billions of kids not in America are still alive) and the fact that Mira can’t play in the playground across the street during the childcare hours, cause then they’re liable. We loved you America, but you’re silly.