Wednesday, July 2, 2008

water, water, everywhere

i just finished reading life of pi. it was a long overdue read, considering everyone i know raved about it when they read it. i thought it was going to give me a different perspective on religion. teach me respect for other religions. not so different from my own outlook, "they're all different passports to the same afterlife." or something like that.

for those of you who haven't read it, go get it. it's a great story. slow going at first, i polished off the second half of the book yesterday after taking about a week to read the first half. oddly, pi's struggles to stay hydrated got me thinking about water.

water. we all need it. as kids, we didn't like it, but we drank it. a glass of water was unheard of. other sources, however, bring me back to those hot summer days playing outside. what triggered this? yesterday, i had a nice cool drink from a water fountain. in elementary school, water fountains were the best consistent source of water. i remember comparing notes with classmates on which ones worked best, which ones were the coldest, and which ones tasted good. yesterday, that water fountain was a blessed elixir to soothe my parched throat. exceptions to this rule are water fountains in churches and those that are outdoors. they just don't taste right. kids these days probably don't compare these notes, as their parents are more likely to send them to school with water bottles. i even had one boy who claims his mother told him never to drink from the water fountain.

coming in a close second is hose water. i thought clowe was getting a drink from the hose on saturday when we returned to his house. that earthy, metallic taste. i used to drink more than my belly could hold. it was just cool enough, never the first stream though. that was the water that got heated up and had the strongest hose flavor. just a hint of rubber or vinyl and the metal pipes. delicious!

incidentally, water has been in the news a lot lately. cities such as atlanta banning bottled water in light of environmental concerns. i thought i'd heard it all. then i saw this. ridiculous, no?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very strange, sir. I was in the library the other day searching for a good book to read and ended up picking up Life of Pi. I too had never read it yet heard good things from people who had. It's still sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read because I started another book first, but now that I've gotten another good review I'll be sure to move it to the top of my list of "Things to Do."