by Kevin from the USA – ArchWired Reader
So… as I do twice a day and rather nonchalantly now, I broke out the Waterpik one night, and after going through this little ritual of running the water till I can make it lukewarm like the directions say, and filling up the reservoir I was ready to go. My waterpik has an intensity control on the handle and an interrupter button. Normally the routine is to set the intensity on maximum, start the unit (pointing the nozzle into the sink, of course), and once water is pulsing through the nozzle, throttle it down to minimum, hit the interrupter button so you can raise it to your mouth and start irrigating.
After I’m finished, I remove the reservoir, after switching the unit off, open up the intensity control and set the thing below the level of the pump to drain out all of the water before putting it away. When you start using one of these you have to take it easy because I swear these things can blast holes through cement if switched up to full power. I’d like to see the guy who irrigates at full throttle – I’ll bet he doesn’t need braces because he could remove teeth at the roots at that level! Anyway, I went through this little routine, got the thing into my mouth, and released the interrupter button only to realize that I never throttled it down to minimum. OUCH!!! Immediately I yanked the nozzle from my mouth, forgot to hit the interrupter button and soon realized that this supercharged squirt gun was now happily blasting away at the walls, the mirror, and anything in its line of fire.
What made it worse is that in my panic to find the interrupter button or the throttle, neither of which is easy to control once you find yourself in this situation, I, like I do before putting it away and without thinking set the nozzle in the sink to kill the power. Well, I tell you, this thing immediately launched itself from the basin and began flailing wildly at the end of its hose, pummeling walls, floor, ceiling, and ME in the process. I must have looked like a real geek at that point, in my boxers, t-shirt, enclosed in a 4×5 foot half bath, cowering for my life from the evil Waterpik monster before desperately grabbing for the power cord to shut it down.
It looked like a scene out of some sci-fi movie as these streams of water randomly sliced across my t-shirt while the Waterpik was wildly trying to liberate itself from the base unit. It was embarrassing enough – good things my wife or sons didn’t come down and observe this. I think they would still be on the floor laughing.