05/14/2026
Old wives’ tales true?
by Mark Millican
A recent warning echoed ones I’ve heard all my life. After informing Teresa I was going to jump in the shower – but not with, you know, a jump rope or pogo stick – she cautioned me it was storming outside. As in, thunder and lightning. The clear implication was that if I got in the shower with water running all over me that lightning could run into the house, snake through the plumbing, and give me the shocking of my life.
We possess nary a lightning rod on our roof, you see. Even so, I jumped into the shower.
But here’s the thing. All my live-long days, I’ve never heard of anyone being electrocuted by lightning running into a home through the plumbing system and out through a shower head – or into bath water. Never.
Yet how did this dire yet evidently unheard of occurrence become commonly-accepted legend, or even myth? So I asked my phone (actually I typed it in, since I feel the more I talk to what could be a spying device the more license it takes). Without actually answering this question – “How often have people taking a shower been struck by lightning?” – the National Weather Service reported the odds of being struck by a skyborne bolt in your lifetime are 1 in 15,300.
ADT.com, the home security people, also beat around the bush for a couple of webpages before finally stating, “Metal in our homes, including plumbing, can act as a conduit for electrical current. While it’s certainly not a given that you would get struck by lightning in the shower, it is possible.” However, just as I suspected (after looking under the kitchen sink, and also knowing this from years of working in construction), most plumbing now is PVC pipe except for the spigots. So just to be on the safe side, assume electricity has jumping power.
In this regard, another advisory we learned growing up was to unplug the TV set from the wall outlet when it started thundering – and never mind if American Bandstand was rockin’ and dancin’ on a stormy Saturday afternoon. But now we have surge protectors, so that prevents this from happening, right? At our home in Ellijay we actually have the TV and a DVD player running through back-to-back surge protectors, but don’t ask me why. I don’t have a clue.
And finally, since this column is about verifying old wives’ tales (and I certainly hold no umbrage toward older wives), let’s tackle one more. As I’m writing this a true blackberry winter is about to befall us. No snow is forecast, but while we’re on the subject, was there or is there any precaution about not making snow cream out of the first appreciable snowfall of the year like we heard since we were kids? You know, because that first snowfall allegedly cleans the nuclear radiation out of the air and if you eat those contaminated snowflakes the glow from your insides may keep you up at night. OK, I made that last part up.
Is there anything to it? I mean, it’s not like nuclear bombs are detonating every week. In fact – and I haven’t done a deep dive on this – the only nuclear outbursts since World War II have been the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island and the full meltdown at Chernobyl, and both were long after the warnings we received as children in the 1950s-’60s.
So in answer to the statement, “Don't eat snow cream because of nuclear radiation in the first snowfall of the season,” AI responds with several suggestions. This first bit of ‘Amassed Information’ is from YouTube: “It is generally advised to avoid eating the first snowfall of the season for snow cream because the snow acts as a filter, collecting atmospheric pollutants, chemicals and particles as it falls. While ‘nuclear radiation’ is not the typical concern, the first snow collects the highest concentration of airborne contaminants …”
And guess what? Where you collect the white stuff for your first bowl of snow cream matters. TikTok, whether or not it includes a Chinese spy app, tersely advises us that “Rural snow is generally safer than urban snow.” And perhaps a more trusted source, the Lexington (Ky.) Herald Leader newspaper, soft pedals this: “While a little fresh snow in a clean, rural area is unlikely to cause harm, skipping the very first snowfall is a prudent measure to avoid consuming accumulated contaminants.”
So what do you call a decent cleansing rain that noticeably clears the air of accumulated contaminants, makes everything smell fresher, and brings out the vibrancy of flowers and green leaves – chopped liver?
Just wait. The first time it snows a few inches again I’m filling up a bowl, stirring in sugar and vanilla, and sticking it in the freezer until it starts thundering the following summer. Then it’s getting thawed out and eaten while I’m watching TV during a lightning storm. Just not in the shower.
