Remember when people did not walk around with bottles of water?

I do.

Bottles used to be just for babies and soccer players.  If these individuals got thirsty, the bottle was there.  The rest of us had to wait until the appropriate meal times.

Then sometime in the late 80s the French figured out that Americans would be stupid enough to pay for water just because it was in a bottle.  First it was Perrier and Evian and then other brands made their splash.

I was in the eighth grade when I first noticed people around me carrying bottles of water.  I thought to myself, “There are water fountains placed throughout the school.  Why are they carrying around water?  They are not babies.  They are not playing soccer.”

But it did not matter.  As I was to learn, they needed the water because they needed.  And after two decades of carrying water in bottles, the medical community has decreed that everyone should drink more water.

Even the bottles themselves have changed.  For a long time plastic was the rage.  But then too many health and environmental issues arose so that now people are buying aluminum bottles with designer labels.  There are websites weighing the relative merits of different brands of designer aluminum water bottles.

Last year I saw a water fountain in an old courthouse.  It was the first water fountain I’d seen in ten years.  I went over to it, leaned down to sip, but when I pulled the lever nothing came out.  The fountain had run dry.