Water pressure aliens: Stay away

Les MacPherson, The StarPhoenix
Published: Saturday, January 26, 2008

I have always been highly skeptical of claims of the paranormal. Ghosts, aliens, crystal balls and all the rest of it I dismissed as baloney. Independent, scientific investigation seems to confirm that paranormal claims are properly lumped in with the processed luncheon meat.

Recent events at home have caused me to reconsider. Maybe there is something to the paranormal after all.

We just experienced at our place a UDWP. For those of you unfamiliar with the jargon of paranormalcy, a UDWP is an unexplained drop in water pressure. Granted, it's not as dramatic as an alien abduction, with or without the customary probing, but if the water pressure can suddenly drop for no apparent reason, anything is possible.

It was my wife who first noticed. She was just out of bed when she turned the bathroom tap and got but a dribble. The kitchen tap dribbled likewise, indicating the problem was systemic. That we might at least have water to drink, she put a pail under the tap to collect the precious few drops that reluctantly emerged.

We have had some experience at our place in going without water. A few years ago, it was shut off for three days due to a frozen main. The whole block was cut off. Water for drinking and cooking we drew in buckets from a big, mobile tank parked on the icy street. I was reminded of pictures I'd seen of women drawing water from the River Neva during the siege of Leningrad.

For a shower, we had to impose on neighbours outside the shutoff zone. They could not have been more gracious. Their excellent selection of shampoos almost made up for the inconvenience.

My wife feared a repeat performance. But no. By the time I got up and heard all about it, the pressure was back to normal. Further observations would later confirm there was no problem with the mains. Of backhoes and slushy lakes on the street, there were none. So why, then, had the pressure dropped so precipitously?

I should mention here that I am one of those people who is exquisitely sensitive to the slightest fluctuation in water pressure. When I'm in the shower, for example, I can tell when someone even thinks about flushing the toilet. Unfortunately, the interval between the thinking and the flushing is typically measured in fractions of a second, so it's not much of a warning before the scalding.

My heightened perception of water pressure comes from growing up in Regina at a time when the pressure was notoriously low. So meagre was the flow that you had to run around in the shower to get wet. A flushed toilet took hours to recharge. We had to ration our bowel movements.

When I moved to Saskatoon, what most impressed me was the improved water pressure. Now I had to brace myself in the shower or risk being knocked off my feet as if by a water cannon. I only wish we could have actual water-cannon technology in residential bathrooms. You could shower in about two seconds, and you'd come out water-cannon clean.

The point is that water pressure, to me, is a big deal. I'm tuned into it, as a Jedi warrior is tuned into The Force. What I'm tuning into in this case is something beyond the ordinary. There's no rational explanation for the sudden loss and restoration of our water pressure. We must, therefore, look to crackpot explanations.

I suspect space aliens. If they can travel across the universe, it figures they are too advanced to communicate with us primitive Earthlings in any conventional way. Perhaps they communicate through water pressure. If we somehow could decode their signals, maybe we could learn the secrets of the universe. I'm just guessing, but an interruption in water service could mean that we humans have been judged and found wanting. Of course, that's not exactly a secret of the universe.

The spirit world offers an alternative explanation. Maybe our pipes are haunted. We could call in a team of ghost hunters, as seen on reality TV, to drive out the mischievous spirits, but honestly, I'd rather deal with the mischievous spirits. They're not as disruptive.

For now, at least, the mystery remains. And where there is mystery, there will always be baloney.