Shockingly Clean

There’s nothing quite like coming home to an unelectrified plumbing system – because, I don’t care how tough and rugged you are, sometimes you just want to wash away the day’s worries without having to turn the hot water knob using an insulator. Trust me – a bucket bath just doesn’t live up to the hype if you’re in a constant state of careful estimation regarding whether or not there’s an unbroken circuit of water between the sink’s faucet and where the soap sits on the edge of the counter. When you don’t feel like jumping at the most minute twitch of a muscle because you think it’s the first sign that you’re about to be the path of least resistance between the water-covered floor and the capricious voltage source that sometimes manages to coerce the water pipes into collusion. Perhaps the most hilariously frustrating part is when, as you see the bucket below the lower faucet nearly full, you hurriedly grab some cotton shorts and use them to insulate your hand as you turn the lower-faucet on–everything off–shower-on lever to the middle, “everything off” position, but, in your hurry, go a bit too far, crossing over into “shower on” territory, and those handful of drops fall straight down, directly onto your shorts, on your hand, on the metal lever, almost instantaneously turning your shorts from quality insulator to great conductor, and sending that telltale throbbing pulse up your arm and down your leg.