At the beginning of my favorite James Bond movie, Goldfinger, James throws a bad guy into a bathtub and electrocutes him with a plugged-in lamp. As the bad guy splashes and thrashes in terror, James says wryly, “Shocking. Positively shocking.”

Well, that’s what my winter experience has been like here in Dillon. Shocking. Positively shocking.

I have managed to accrue so much static electricity in my apartment that I’m afraid to touch anything.

I walked from my couch to my living room window (about four feet) and managed to shock myself while picking off a philodendron leaf. It was dead! And it still shocked me.

In the two foot walk from my couch to my phone, my body built up so much static that when I touched the caller id box, it shorted out. And now, like the philodendron leaf, the caller id box is dead.

Once when I walked from the couch to my kitchen (a considerable distance), I had so much static running through me that when I turned on the kitchen light, the shock from the light plate threw out a blue arc and my hair actually puffed out a little on the left side.

My mom said I should ground myself to avoid getting shocked. “Touch something metal,” she said. “But isn’t metal the problem?” I thought. So I tried walking around with a spoon all day, but that didn’t make a difference.

I tried walking in rubber-soled slippers. I tried walking in socks. I tried walking bare foot. No difference.

I thought maybe my scaly skin had something to do with it. My skin is so dry here that it makes sucking noises as I walk down the lotion aisle of Safeway. I’ve lathered up so much Bath and Body Works product that the president of the company should call to ask if I’m interested in becoming a major stockholder.

But still, no dice.

Then, I remembered an old college trick: pots of water on the radiator. Perfect! Cheap! Except….I don’t control the thermostat in my apartment. I never know when the radiators will be dead cold or burning hot. I left some water on the radiator over night, but the water level hadn’t gone done by morning. Drat.

But wait! I discovered that the common factor in all my shocking experiences was my couch. The static electricity builds up in the moment I stand up from my traditional position of repose on the couch. Ah ha! I ran to Safeway, sprinting past the lotion bottles screaming, “Buy me! Buy me!” and found a can of Static Guard.

Perfect, right? Nope. I sprayed my couch with reckless abandon and all the Static Guard did was stink up my apartment.

Why not buy a humidifier, you might ask? I considered buying a humidifier when I had whooping cough, but I didn’t want to have to deal with the expense or the upkeep. My water here is really hard, and I predicted a daily routine of scraping away at calcium and lime deposits.

And, to be really honest, I don’t want too much humidity in my apartment because the dry air makes my hair look fantastic. It’s bouncing and behaving like never before, and I’m loathe to make a radical change.

Ah, the eternal question: Great hair and numb fingers or sad hair and healthy digits?

In the end, I decided to go withthe humidifier. It’s small and it looks like a Conehead from Saturday Night Live. But it’s quiet and considerate and features an electric blue night light around the base to safely lead me to the potty in the middle of the night.

And though my hair is limper than usual, I almost have the feeling back in my left pinky.