America’s Intervention
America, we’ve gathered your friends and family here to help with this intervention. It’s time you come to terms with the fact that……well……..you have a drinking problem.
No, I’m not talking about slamming back a few brewskies with the boys at the bar or guzzling down a box of cheap wine by imitation candlelight with some Ritz crackers and a can of aerosol cheese. I’m not even talking about enjoying the company of our old pals Johnny Walker, Jim Beam or Jack Daniels. What I’m talking about is why, we as a nation, have become incapable of carrying out our most mundane daily tasks without an overpriced cup of coffee or a three dollar bottle of water on our persistently parched person. It has become almost comical.
I can remember not long ago, if you got thirsty you went to the water fountain (or bubbler as we used to call them) and slurped down a few mouthfuls of semi-cool H2O and went about your day. Not anymore. Now folks are filling up their “hydration bottles” with pure filtered water so they can survive the 6 block car ride to Starbucks.
Even at the peak of the gasoline price hikes last summer people would complain about paying just under $5.00 per gallon for gas while they were sucking down a bottle of lightly lemon flavored water that cost the equivalent of $10.00 per gallon.
When did we get so thirsty, and why?
It wasn’t long ago that folks would invest a buck to drink a fancy bottle of Perrier sparkling French drinking water in a green glass bottle with a metal screw top cap. It was mostly for show as the stuff inside the bottle tasted like watered down soda water. But nowadays folks think nothing of coughing up 2 bucks plus for a bottle of plain drinking water in a paper-thin plastic bottle just so they don’t have to face the next 10 minutes without some form of rehydration. Oh sure the label on the bottle says it’s pure mountain spring water but the reality is the water came down from that mountain 100 years ago, was eventually siphoned through miles of pipeline into a bottling plant where it came out of the same water main that feeds your garden hose.
Everywhere I look I see people with some form of beverage in their hand. Driving the car, shopping for groceries, in the mall, riding a bike, walking down the street, at work, in school, even at church. There are Bedouin spice traders that travel hundreds of miles of sand dunes on camelback that carry less potable liquid than most Americans on their way to the store.
My local grocery store has an entire aisle dedicated to various forms of drinking water. It also has a Starbucks right in the store so shoppers can sip their latte whilst choosing their bottle of water. I watched as a family of 5 strolled the aisle trying to come to a consensus on what water everybody preferred. Mom had her Starbucks, Dad had a reusable drinking bottle and the 3 kids each had a juice box. Am I missing something here? Was there some sort of nuclear attack and nobody told me?
I salute the marketing geniuses that were able to convince Americans to buy tap water for $10 per gallon and spend the better part of their day either drinking it or waiting in line for the restroom. I wonder if they worked for a water company or the American Urologist Association.
No wonder the Depends take up the next full aisle.
