I'll Totally Go Green...Except for This

I'm saving the planet, I swear. I reuse the paper when my stupid printer spits out half a document. I turn off the water when I'm brushing my teeth. I recycle my wine bottles, ensuring at least another ten years of glass for the rest of the world. I turn off the spiral light bulbs that remind me of icing when I'm playing World of Warcraft. These are all good ideas, and I'm happy to do it. But there are two 'going green' items that I despise. I mean, I hate them with a wild, burning passion. Low flow toilets and low flow shower heads.



Not sure about other states, but every once in a while, California sends out a low flow shower head to it's residents. Now, I have no hard data on this, but I'm pretty damn sure most of those remain in the box. I feel bad. I mean, they're trying. Saving water is a good thing. I want to be able to shower in real water in the future, not take a dust bath like a chinchilla. (Darn, those little guys are adorable.)



But here is the thing. I have long hair. Always have. I wrapped it around donut-shaped frames to be Princess Leia when I was a kid. I twisted it into braids. I had a gym teacher who used to grab my pigtails and tell me he was riding a motorcycle. (I know that sounds dirty now, but I swear it wasn't.) It's part of my identity and after an especially disastrous hair cut in sixth grade that had me crying in a bathroom, telling my mom I looked like a blond Annie, I will always have it. Long hair requires washing and I'm sorry, but using a low flow shower head is like standing under a drooling ogre. Just doesn't getcha clean, know what I mean?



Have any of you been in Europe lately? Ever seen those double button toilets? The ones that have an option for the amount of water you want to use? (I'll discuss troll boogers and the spiders in my basement for hours, but I don't think you need me to be graphic here, do you?) Anyway, why the hell don't we have those in America? Seems logical, right? If you have to flush a low flow toilet more than once, it kind of defeats the purpose. And in that vein, why don't we have a low flow/high flow option on our shower heads? I don't think people want to waste water. I'd be perfectly happy to switch over to a lower setting while soaping my hair and singing Bill Murray's lounge lizard version of the 'Star Wars' theme.



I'm just saying, if you want people to adopt something, don't be stupid about it. Now, I'm off to eat my last bag Sun Chips in the now-0fficially-banned-biodegradable-extra-loud bag.