Water, water, everywhere

It  puzzles the life out of me and it is something I see everyday as a teacher.  Almost all the children I encounter seem absolutely obsessed with their huge and surprisingly expensive water bottles, which they carry religiously from class to class and regularly refill at the plentiful water fountains on the campus. In fact, they remind me of a bunch of diminutive Ancient Mariners.

I am pretty sure this is an American thing … and I just don’t get it.  In England we occasionally carry a thermos filled with tea.  If I were wandering in Scotland, I might have a wee flask filled with a dram of the good stuff, but water! I suppose if you were some kind of Sassenach, you might add a few drops from one of the Highland streams, but you would risk Hibernian ire and that is about it.

I assume that this obsession with water is a recent fad  and evidence for this comes from the words of the late, great W.C. Fields, which I sadly cannot repeat here for reasons of obscenity, but which involves piscatorial copulation in the dank element. 

I don’t dare forbid the use of the distracting things in my class lest the poor dehydrated dears expire before my very eyes, turning into small puffs of dust rather like Count Dracula when exposed to sunlight. 

I should be grateful for enlightenment.