Get Out Of the Bathtub! There's A Storm Coming!

I can't tell you how many times I've heard this in my life.

Where I grew up you can see for miles over flat fields. Anytime farm chores left a film on your skin and thunderheads were piling up, you ran for the house so that you didn't have to smell yourself while eating dinner. Now that I'm older - and supposedly wiser - I've found out that a lot of the things I learned when I was a kid weren't necessarily true. Try most of American history... but that's another post.

So while brainstorming for new book ideas I found myself ruminating on this old idea. Did I really need to leap out of the bathtub every time my mom yelled at me, or was she just being overly protective? A little research was all it took to find out that she was no helicopter parent and that Norman Bates is not the only thing to be scared of while getting clean.
  • Yes: You can be struck be lightning while in the shower. When lightning strikes a home it can travel through plumbing, metal pipes delivering that electricity directly to anyone who happens to be holding onto them at the time. Not only that, but the water itself carries impurities that help conduct electricity.
  • Hold the Phone: Actually, don't. For everyone who still has a landline, those conduct lightning blasts as well. Right into your ear. 
  • Those Dishes Will Keep & Your Breath Is Not That Bad : Yeah, don't do dishes during a thunderstorm either. Or brush your teeth. Honestly you should probably just follow the dog. Go under the bed and whimper for a little while.
It turns out that mother nature really can be quite vengeful, and my own wasn't as paranoid as I thought.



2 comments:

Darth Lolita said...

Florida won't give it a rest with the thunderstorms. I guess now I have a perfect excuse to bail from dish washing :P

BBC said...

Absolutely! You also shouldn't brush your teeth or bathe thought, so just be aware you social acceptability rating may drop...