Question: how many glasses of water does it take for the average child to stay hydrated on a hot summer’s day? One? Four? Infinity minus one?
The truth is, no one really knows the answer to that question, because no one has yet managed to build a cabinet big enough to hold more glasses than one child can use on a typical summer’s day. So all we really know so far is how long it takes the average child to pull out and use the last glass, which, depending on the size of your cabinet, can be anywhere from five minutes to two hours. (Five minutes being the number for an average-sized cabinet, like mine, while two hours would be the time it takes them to empty out a cabinet the size of a Prius.)
You’d think that this would be a good thing: after all, Flagstaff is the second driest city in America, so it’s probably for the best that the children of Flagstaff have taken responsibility for keeping themselves hydrated. You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But, of course, you’d be wrong. Because while the children of Flagstaff are taking the glasses, and filling those glasses, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they are actually drinking the water from those glasses.
Here’s a typical scenario: a child walks into kitchen, gets a glass of water, fills it to the top and either takes one sip and sets it down or wanders away, takes one sip, and then sets it down. Five minutes later, the same child comes back into kitchen, gets another glass, fills it with water, and then repeats the process. This continues until all of the drinking glasses are dispersed throughout the house.
Once there are no more clean glasses to use, the child will then pick up a “used” glass—one that is full of water—dump that water into the sink, rinse the glass out with approximately three more gallons of water, fill it up again, take one sip, and then set it down. Another child (or sometimes even the same child) will then come along, pick up the full glass, and repeat this process. Over, and over, and over again.
There are two things about this that bother me. One, of course, is the waste of water: I swear I can her the water table drop a foot every time a child goes into the kitchen. But the other thing is the unspoken suggestion that, apparently we are raising the worst generation of pessimists since the Great Depression. I mean, think about it: why are all these kids so suspicious of their fellow man? Why do they feel that they cannot leave a glass of water unattended for five minutes without something nasty happening to it? Because, you know, the glass is only sitting on a counter (or table, or bookshelf, or dresser) in my house. It’s not like it’s in some dark corner of a sketchy rave in the warehouse district of Detroit, presided over by a guy named “Lucky.”. And it’s not like there’s some guy waiting in my bathroom with a bathtub full of ice, cooling his heels until the knockout drops take effect before he can start removing kidneys.
Of course, maybe they’re not afraid of some random guy slipping them a roofie; maybe what they’re really afraid of the house itself. Maybe they’re afraid that some sort of unintentional and unnoticed filth will slipped into their unattended drink. But that’s just ridiculous, because the only way a glass of water could become contaminated just by being exposed to the air in my house would be if my house were filthy, a complete sty, a fetid pit filled with the stench of . . .hey.
On second thought, maybe I’ll just get a fresh glass from the dishwasher my own self.