Flashing, screeching showerhead best Secret Santa gag gift for 2023 | Dion Lefler column

When I bought the Color Changing LED Shower Head for $5 at what used to be the dollar store, I wondered “What could possibly go wrong?”

Quite a lot, it turns out.

If hell hath showers, these are the showerheads.

The print on the box was promising: The brand name is Brilliant Ideas. (Who doesn’t like those?)

It “cycles through 7 vibrant LED colors” (I like colors) and it’s “powered by running water, no batteries required” (also a plus, because I hate buying batteries).

When I bought the thing at my neighborhood Dollar Tree, I guess what I envisioned and hoped for was a showerhead that would set some relaxing mood lighting in the bathroom. That, and the added prospect of a more comfortable transition between full darkness and full bathroom lighting on those occasions when I have to get up and shower before sunup (I’m not a morning person).

My son and I contemplated installing it in the master bathroom as a surprise for my wife, who was away visiting a friend in upstate New York last weekend. But in a rare burst of good judgment, I decided to try it out in the hallway bathroom before springing it on her.

In terms of marital harmony, I did the right thing.

If I’d followed the original plan, I’d have been awakened Monday morning by startled shouting and spent the pre-dawn hours (my wife is a morning person) putting the shower back the way it was.

I’d expected the showerhead would slowly cycle between the colors. It doesn’t. It strobes like the light bar on a police cruiser.

And if you could somehow find that acceptable, the tiny spinning turbine that powers the unit gives off a sound like a siren a foot away from your head.

Qualitatively, the experience is like taking a shower in the middle of an active crime scene. The company’s marketing slogan should be, “If you back the blue, this showerhead’s for you.”

By now, you’re probably thinking, “You should have known better.”

And you’d be right.

I didn’t go to Dollar Tree for a showerhead in the first place.

I was fixing the brakes on my 1976 Chevy Blazer and the only thing I really needed to buy was a turkey baster. That’s not actually as strange as it sounds. Brake fluid’s the nastiest liquid under the hood and using a turkey baster is the time-honored hack for draining a master cylinder without causing a hazmat spill or blistering paint in the engine compartment.

Near the checkout was an unexpected and seductive array of high-tech LED products, all $5 (the days of “Everything’s $1” ended in late 2021).

▪ There was a Bluetooth speaker that lights up in response to varying tones of music, like a Radio Shack “color organ” of the 1970s.

▪ There were light strips you could paste all over your car and re-enact your favorite scenes from “2 Fast 2 Furious.”

▪ There was a waterproof light-up puck that I guess you could use to play roller hockey in an unlit swimming pool at night, if that’s your jam.

But my attention went right to the showerhead, because we actually do need one.

Many years of Wichita’s deliberately unfluoridated, but otherwise mineral-laden tap water, has taken its toll on The Original Shower Massage by Waterpik.

But the time has come to set aside my disappointment over the Color Changing LED Shower Head and come up with a way to salvage the $5 I spent on it as best I can.

I have two ideas.

I could keep it and swap it out in the downstairs bathroom if the need ever arises to let houseguests know they’ve overstayed their welcome.

Or, Christmas season is around the bend and with it, those Secret Santa gift exchanges. When I shop for those, I usually gravitate toward the aisle with products marked “As seen on TV” — the international code phrase for “things that would be completely useless, even if they did work.”

I think I may have inadvertently done my Secret Santa shopping early this year.

Merry Christmas, to someone to be determined.