I was meeting my mom to go to lunch when I saw a small plastic cap jutting out of her tiny hand.
“What’s that?” I asked.
Her eyes widened, and then, sheepishly, like a child who’d found a pet mouse in the bushes, she opened her hand to reveal an airplane water bottle. You know the ones. They hold about three ounces of water (and I mean the kind of water you can scoop out of a lake; not even, like, good water.) It sat there in her hand, a little tiny unnecessary plastic atrocity.
“It was free!” she said, by way of excuse.
“Tell that to the continent of Plastica bobbing out there in the Pacific Ocean,” I wailed rather dramatically.
“Your generation,” she said, rolling her eyes. She dropped the water bottle in her purse, where it immediately disappeared for all of eternity. Whenever she knows she’s in the wrong, she reverts to “your generation…” I don’t like to think of myself as being a part of any generation, which she knows all to well, so it always stings…
Anyway, my point is those water bottles are stupid. If you’re going to drink water wrapped up inside a wall of plastic, at least hold out for more than two ounces. And they’re not free, not when you pay hundreds of dollars to fly in an airplane. So next time a flight attendant offers you a couple of ounces of water in a too small plastic bottle, shout loudly, “You call that water? Get me some real water!”
Just say no. They’ll learn.
