Crosspost: Life in a water crisis

[jayeless_archive]

I decided to start crossposting entries from my "main" blog, reasoning that people who read my entries elsewhere might be interested in these as well. This entry was originally posted yesterday, at Jayeless » Life in a water crisis.

Of the many things I am, one of them is that I'm a born-and-raised Victorian. Furthermore, I'm a born-and-raised young Victorian. I was born in 1992, only a few years before the drought took hold. You might have heard of "the drought". There's been so little rain for so many years that the lack of water has become a crisis.

This has several implications for life in this land. The first is water restrictions. I have vague memories of splashing around merrily in garden sprinklers as a toddler on hot summer afternoons. As a slightly older child, I remember playing some kind of espionage thriller game with my sister which involved me shooting her about a MILLION TIMES with a water gun. (It was again summer, and I did want her to shoot me back, but she kept missing. I wasn't happy.) I remember once being given permission to water the garden, and merrily turning the garden hose upwards into the air to create a kind of dodgy artificial rain.

Well, all of these things are now illegal, on pain of a $2,000 fine. For serious. If your neighbours report you to police for wilful violation of water restrictions, you have to pay $2,000 for it. One of the houses down the street has a sign in the front yard: "THIS HOUSE HAS INSTALLED A WATER TANK". If they did not, the owner could be reported for watering their garden.

But this didn't satisfy that Geography teacher I had earlier this year. "You know it's funny, for a city in the grip of a water crisis, you'd think you'd have water restrictions."

"We have water restrictions!" I protested, and I told him all about what I wrote just before.

"Those are NOT water restrictions," he retorted. "Where I come from, we have water restrictions. We have police patrolling up and down the streets in vans all day, watching out for people watering their gardens illegally or whatever. THOSE are water restrictions."

My state is apparently not as oppressive as New South Wales and we don't have water police patrolling vans. No, instead, for as long as I can remember, we've had propaganda.

And clearly this propaganda has made a deep and lasting impression on me, because I'm always conscious around water supplies to make sure I don't take more than I need. And it really, REALLY pisses me off when other people don't do this.

Like when I walk into the kitchen and see that someone has left the water tap on for NO APPARENT REASON and water is being poured straight down the drain. I turn it off as fast as I can, but all I can think is, "How much water was wasted going down that drain before I found it???"

And when people don't turn off the tap in the sink while they brush their teeth??? That one infuriates me to no end as well. You don't need any more water! The toothbrush is already in your mouth! You can turn the tap back on again when you want to rinse it!

And it REALLY pisses me off when I watch movies or TV shows in which the protagonists aren't being water-wise. Like I was once watching this American crime show, I forgot what it was, in which a woman walked into the office bathroom and turned on the tap to wash her face. OK, that's fine. Then she looked up to stare at her face and poke at it -- argh. Not cool, man. I started twitching. But it got worse.

Because then she heard a suspicious noise in one of the toilet cubicles, AND WALKED AWAY WITHOUT TURNING THE TAP OFF.

I was going, "What the fuck??? No! Turn around! Turn that tap off! YOU'RE WASTING WATER!"

I know there's not a water crisis in (most of) the US but that TV show killed me inside. Way to subtly suggest to the people that wasting water is OK, Channel Ten! The message of that show was clearly, "If this attractive young police officer doesn't have to worry about water restrictions, neither do you!"

I forgot what the actual crime was because the crime of WASTING WATER was just too traumatic for me to remember the violent one. If I'd been that person in that show making the suspicious noise in the toilet cubicle I'd have reported her to the police for sure. I mean, what the hell. Don't waste water. That's just wrong.

Is this issue of mine weird? Well, probably, yes. But, I doubt I'm the only one with weird obsessive issues, and besides, this one has been approved by the state, so it has to be a good thing. (Ahem.) So, as a question I pose to potential commenters: what slightly weird obsessions do you have? Or, alternatively: how have the issues of your upbringing affected you later on?