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Rob Glover is an associate professor of political science at the University of Maine and a resident of Hampden.
It’s time we had a talk about our collective, uniquely American, fixation with hydration. But let me be clear: this is not a column about the perils of too much or too little water consumption.
Instead, I want to talk about the perils of hauling around what amounts to a personal metal water tower in your bag and the psychic trauma it inflicts upon those around you when you drop it.
I’m a professor at the University of Maine. It’s finals week and I’ve just emerged from an exam. It was harrowing. But it wasn’t the exam experience that had me shaken. It was the chorus of clanks and thunderous metallic gongs hitting the floor throughout the entire exam. CLANG! BONGGG! CLONGGG!
I’m talking, of course, about the ubiquitous 32-ounce metal hydration flask (or any number of lookalike imitators), the unofficial mascot of American overkill. Once a humble container designed to hold a modest amount of water, it has become something larger and louder.
Why are we doing this? How did we get here? At what point did we, as a society, decide that carrying around enough water to sustain a family farm was necessary to survive an hour-long meeting?
Our ancestors crossed mountains and oceans, built settled communities, and somehow didn’t collapse into piles of desiccated bones without the aid of a double-insulated, vacuum-sealed jug that requires two hands and a spotter to operate.
And remember water fountains? Or, as we say in Maine, “bubblahs”? Remember the little thrill of leaning in for a sip, only to find a sad, little stream barely arcing out of the nozzle, leading to a strategic mouth-to-metal calculation?
It was a rite of passage, a social experience, a moment. Now, apparently, the very idea of communal hydration infrastructure is tantamount to public health negligence, and everyone must instead lug around their own personal reservoir at all times. It’s BYOW (Bring Your Own Water), or perish.
And perish we will, not from thirst, but from fear. Because when a 2.5-pound steel bottle wobbles off a table and smashes onto the floor, it’s not just disruptive, it’s terrifying.
Is it a bomb? An earthquake? An enraged groundhog who somehow got trapped in the HVAC system and is intent on smashing its way out?
No, it’s just life-sustaining, ice-cold water being hauled around clumsily in a wobbly vessel that resembles a mortar shell.
We need to stop this madness. Stop the clangs, the bangs, the thunderous smashes. Let’s reclaim our dignity, our eardrums, and our nervous systems from the tyranny of the metal water flask.
Let’s bring back the humble 12-ounce water bottle. Let’s resurrect the modest water fountain.
Let’s accept that we can make it through our day without pastel colored tactical hydration gear.