“How many water bottles do you need in the fridge?” Sue asked.
How many water bottles do I need in the fridge? Apparently less than I want but more than you are comfortable with. We can meet somewhere in the middle as long as the middle is closer to my side than yours.
I could have challenged your yogurt supply but have chosen not to. I stare at the shelf your vanilla bean yogurt occupies — a shelf deep as the ocean and as wide as the Great Plains — and I wonder, but I keep my wonder to myself.
At least buy some with fruit in it. What do you have against fruit? Why wouldn’t you want to enjoy the rush of pleasure when you discover the blueberry treasure at the bottom of a carton?
I don’t know how many bottles I need. It’s hot, I’m thirsty and I down them faster than you can eat fruitless yogurt.
I like cold water and have not accepted the conventional wisdom that says you should drink warm water because cold water will give you a heart attack. If I’m going to have a heart attack, and I’d say I’m pretty even money given Benhams have had heart attacks for 30 generations, I’d prefer my final memories be, “This water is giving me a heart attack but it’s nice and cold.”
“How many do I need? Why would you ask because it’s not like I have that many.”
She looked at me, I looked at her and then I looked in the fridge to see what the fuss was about.
I counted. There were 12. This wasn’t thirst, this was hoarding. I had exceeded my quota by even my own generous standards.
There was a forest of white water bottles that shaded or blocked everything else. Whoever did this was a sick individual but, to his credit, he hadn’t laid them on their sides in the crisper or the cheese drawer.
Summer and now fall’s heat brings a water bottle frenzy. No one can have enough or drink enough. I had bottles in three fridges: the kitchen, garage and in the junior-sized fridge upstairs. The upstairs fridge was for night sweats — too much tequila, too many Ruffles and when the air conditioner quits, you are Night Sweats Johnson.
After the initial investment, rather than buying more cases of water, I filled empty bottles with tap water and pretended it was spring water — Benham Springs, sourced at 20th and Pine.
All water bottles are not created equal. Smartwater bottles are water bottle royalty and I buy them not because I am smart or think if I drink the water I will become so but because the bottles are sturdy and stand tall in a fridge, holding their own with stolid cartons of milk, half-full wine bottles and flat, but pushy plastic containers of basil.
The flimsy 12- and 16-ounce water bottles are at the bottom of the depth chart. Although they have utilitarian value, they do hold water, they are better enjoyed during the day rather than in a darkened room at 2 a.m., especially after being refilled once or twice.
They hardly stand up straight when they are used and tend to lean in a fridge if not fall over which does nothing to endear them to either friend or foe. At night, if you reach blindly for a bottle, it is apt to crackle and make an alarming noise in an otherwise quiet room. If the crackling hasn’t woken the person with whom you are sleeping, worry not because after you suck down a third of the bottle, the noise the plastic makes either in the expansion or depletion of oxygen will finish the job.
Inventory reduction began recently by recycling the flimsy bottles rather than refilling them. Next up were the repurposed Gatorade bottles, which had done their job nicely but always bothered me because the label reads Gatorade but the color and taste are Benham Springs.
The Smartwater bottles are keepers. They will make it through this winter and probably a nuclear one too. For marriage enhancement, they don’t crackle and may prove wise to have around.
October 20, 2020 at 01:18AM
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HERB BENHAM: Need that cool, cool water - The Bakersfield Californian
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Herb
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