Dowsing for glasses (part of the Florida Blog series)

Dowsing rods are best known for finding water underground, without digging. My college A&P (Anatomy & Physiology) teacher-turned-friend, Chris Elders had his land dowsed to find the underground water source now used to feed his home from a gravity-fed well. The well was dug. The search for water was not.

Not only did some stick in a man's hands find an underground water source, but it found the "gravity-free" source, and indicated how far down the next man had to dig. I think I've remebered the details correctly. Chris, let me know if I missed or messed something up here, ya? What I know for sure is I was impressed by this at the time. It was a long time ago.

Also a long time ago, David Champoux used a pendulum over my belly to answer the questions: "are you pregnant?" and "how many weeks along?" "Yes", it indicated...and the final deduction was seven. The next day I went to Planned Parenthood. I was pregnant. Seven weeks pregnant. The dowsing pendulum was uncannily precise. I don't think uncannily is a word but 32 years ago, it was definitely uncanny.

Wikipedia states that dowsing is "a type of divination" that, under scientific appraisal, is no more reliable than chance. "Dowsing", it continues, "could be explained in terms of sensory cues, expectancy effects and probability". Yeah, ok...whatever. I was seven weeks pregnant. We'd had no idea. Well, some idea, obviously, or we wouldn't've asked the question. But we were not trying & we were skeptical.

Wikipedia states that "skeptics and some supporters believe that dowsing apparatus has no power of its own but merely amplifies slight movements of the hands caused by a phenomenon known as the ideomotor effect: people's subconscious minds may influence their bodies without their consciously deciding to take action. This would make the dowsing rods a conduit for the diviner's subconscious knowledge or perception; but also susceptible to confirmation bias". I understand the bias part, but I also buy the subconcious knowledge or perception bit. I think some people just have a feel, (an uncanny feel), and a "knowing".

Wikipedia also states that "Soviet geologists have made claims for the abilities of dowsers, which are difficult to account for in terms of the reception of normal sensory cues. Some authors suggest that these abilities may be explained by postulating human sensitivity to small magnetic field gradient changes". Yeah... um... that's a whole other field, definitely a whole other blog.

This blog is about a simple & brilliant statement made earlier today by Dan. Dan is the condo building's monthly pest control guy.

It's the beginning of the month, so knock-knock-knock, there's Dan, standing at the door with his hand-held bug-buster apparatis, spraying some bug-repellant liquid along the condo floors' edges... walkin' & talkin' ...like he does. Somehow he got to talking about dowsing. "I dowse for lost items" he said. I stopped keyboarding on the computer. "For things like your phone & blue tooth & keys?" "Yeah" he said without so much as a wrinkle & went right on into the other room doing more bug-prevention.

My body stood up & followed him. My brain was catching up. "WAIT A MINUTE!" I said. "Stop the boat!" He stood there, unemotional, unengaged, looking at me. "Do you mean to tell me..."

Now, let me stop here to check-in. I'm curious... Am I nuts or has this buggy-guy discovered the best thing since contact lenses? Are you realizing what I was realizing at that moment?!

He was certainly not realizing it. He did not realize this was a momentous thing to say. He does not realize just how many people will cry out his name in gratitude & kiss the ground he walks on (well, after the bug-spray stuff wears off) to know this simple solution to the ever-popular question: "where'd I put my glasses?"

So there you have it folks. The answer to possibly the #1 question asked all over the world (most likely second only to "why are we here?")... and the answer/ solution is: dowsing for glasses. (I for one, am seriously grateful. Thank you Dan!)