Bottled Water Dilemma…

I never understood the bottled water craze. Maybe that’s because it didn’t really exist for the first half of my lifetime. As kids, we even drank from the garden hose and miraculously not one of us neighborhood kids died from drinking it.

Given that background, I could never justify paying $2/bottle for “better water” in preference to the stuff that was delivered to the house via city plumbing for pennies per gallon.  

But that’s not the point of this post. Every kid in every class I’ve been to seems to have one of those 16oz clear plastic bottles on the desk that originally contained French, Alpine or some such glacially pure “better water". The 3^rd grade class I had yesterday is no exception.

I had recess duty with the 3^rd graders when one of my half pint students approaches to ask if I will open the classroom so she could fill her water bottle from the drinking fountain in the classroom.

“I’m real hot and thirsty!”

The classroom is only 50-60 feet away, but I’m reluctant to cede her request when there was a perfectly good drinking fountain right behind her as I pointed out.

“Oh, I can’t.  My mom only allows me to drink bottled water!”

I could have pointed out that the plumbing to the OUTSIDE water fountain was the same as the one INSIDE the classroom and therefore had the same water. Also, refilling the bottle after she had already consumed the “better water” didn’t really make it "bottled water" any longer. Actually, it was probably worse depending how many times I suspect that same bottle has been refilled over the course of several classroom days.

Instead, I opted to open the classroom so she could fill her bottle and saved myself the panic that might ensue if the rest of the class (…and maybe the rest of the school?) found out.

It will just have to be our little secret that drinking fountains in the school don’t deliver “better water” than what kids 50yrs ago consumed and that drinking it won’t kill you!