Back to the Tap

I've seen a lot of things change in my 35 years on this earth. I've seen music go from LPs to CDs (never mind cassettes which I always thought were rather disposable and might come apart in your player) to digital down loads and now, increasingly, back to vinyl.

I can't recall the exact year, but I remember when bottled water started showing up in stores. And I remember that a lot of folks thought it was pretty silly to pay 75 cents for a plastic bottle of water at the convenience store. Water came out of the tap for free! or next to free. No, if were spending our money we wanted something for it. We wanted a Coke! But eventually a lot of us started to think of water as a healthy alternative to Coke and sometimes a person just needs a drink of water.

So we bought a cold water at the gas station, at sporting events and concerts. This was a good development. Who wants to get up from the game every five minutes to get a drink from a water fountain? And water fountains sometimes aren't the cleanest places. Bottled water was a hit.

But then something happened. We liked the bottled water so much that we started buying for our houses, and they started serving it in restaurants. And now there is too much bottled water. And, according to folks who study this type of thing, the water bottles are piling up in our land fills, and their petroleum based materials are driving up the price of oil.

So, what do these folks want us to do? Drink tap water. Yep, just like we used to do it back in the old days. And I don't guess that's a bad idea. Water tastes better with ice in a glass. And nothing beats music coming through a needle.