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The Shower Problem

Over a month ago, the water pressure in my shower went from normal to extremely low. And when I say low, I’m talking Brokedown Palace Thai prison drip. Seeing as how my building was built around the time people were manically panning for gold, sometimes there’s issues with the pipes, so I figured I’d just be patient for a few days and see if everything worked itself out.
After a week of huddling up against the shower wall under a drought-like sprinkle and selectively choosing the days to wash my hair, I realized something was wrong, and it was not getting better. I considered calling my rental agency to let them know about the problem, but they only know a few key English phrases like “We come into apartment Friday, ok?” and “No, we no can make rent lower,” and after last month “You no sign rent check. You send more,” so I figured I was going to have to find some sort of translation software program if I was going to get any help from them. At one point, I even tried screwing the shower head off just to test if that was the problem, but I’m pretty sure that thing was soldered on sometime after Reagan was elected.
But, as I was up there, perched on the side of the tub with a pair of pliers in hand, I remembered a story I read about a woman in New York who also started experiencing problems with her shower. Turns out, a rat found its way in to the water pipe, where it was trapped and then drowned, only to be forced against the shower head every time the water was turned on. This wasn’t discovered until weeks after the poor woman endured a sub-par shower, whose stream was no doubt filled with various mousy bits as the body decomposed.
My water pipe is way too small to fit a rat, or even a mouse through, but a large hard-bodied beetle-like insect could easily shimmy down, thinking he’d found a free ride to some sort of food nirvana (my shampoo does, after all, have hints of strawberry in it). And I thought about this every time I stepped in to the shower, looking up at the faucet to see if I could spot brown flecks shooting out. Maybe a leg, perhaps even an antennae. I never saw anything, and eventually the water pressure returned to normalcy, which means one of two things: someone in the building was experiencing the same issue and speaks Mandarin, or it takes a cockroach about a month to decompose when gently bathed on a regular basis.
Ah, city life.
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