I try to avoid saying, "I told you so." I don't necessarily need other people to know that I was right; I can just be glad that I was.
Sometimes, though, I feel a distinct urge to point it out - mostly when I think others were condescending, especially if they missed something that I thought was obvious.
The subject of bottled water is one of those subjects that prompts me to say, "I told you so."
I was a young adult when bottled water started to gain popularity. Some people laughed at the very idea. "They're selling water! Who'd be stupid enough to buy water?"
Of course, the way to counter that is to convince people that the cleanest, most available water in history is tainted. When I'd ask people why they bought bottled water, they'd tell me how it was filtered, from special springs, so much cleaner than tap water.
I never really understood people who were total water snobs.
I horrified my assistant director once, when I was in a murder mystery. The theater was small, and the only water fountain was in the audience area. The performers shared restrooms with the audience (their door was at the east end of the hallway, and ours was at the west end), so we couldn't use them during intermission. We also couldn't use them, unless it was an emergency, during the last half hour before the show started. I had a water bottle, and I frequently refilled it from the restroom sink, the only sink in the theater.
One night, my water was empty just after the show started. I never like to be without water. Since I couldn't go to the water fountain, and didn't have time to go to the restroom before I had to be onstage, I asked the assistant director, who doubled as the backstage manager, to fill it for me, so that it would be waiting during intermission. "I can't go out to the fountain," she said. "The show's started."
"Yeah, I know. Just go to the restroom."
"The restroom?" The horror in her voice was clear.
"Yeah. That's what I do."
"You don't want to drink restroom water!"
"It's not from the toilet or anything."
"Don't you want to wait until intermission, when I can go to the fountain?"
"No, I don't. I want it waiting here when I come offstage."
The conversation did not go any better as it continued. She was scandalized. She finally browbeat me into waiting until intermission, because she was sure that I'd "feel better" if I had water from the fountain. I was sure that I'd feel better if my water was waiting for me, but I didn't want to keep arguing.
I told a friend about the incident weeks later. "What, does she think that there's a special pipe just for the fountain, one that comes straight from the Alps, and all the other pipes come from the sewer?"
My friend was on the AD's side. "But restrooms are dirty."
"Water straight out of the faucet is dirty?"
"Well, you know, there's germs all over the bathroom."
"Have you ever heard of anyone getting sick by brushing their teeth in their bathroom? It doesn't happen. And even if surfaces were germy, are those germs going up inside the faucet? Because that's the only place that the water touches before it goes in my cup or water bottle." Yeah, germs will multiply where they land, but how are they gonna land inside the faucet?
She looked uncomfortable. "The fountain's water is refrigerated."
Three decades after its introduction, we were pretty clear that bottled water often was tap water, and people talked about convenience, or how it was better for you than soda, but that was not the case in the mid 1980s. Back then, I also ran up against a figurative brick wall when discussing the disposal of millions of plastic bottles.
"Can't people just carry a Thermos, and refill it?" I asked a significant number of people. (Note: a Thermos was an insulated, portable liquid container, originally made from metal with a glass insulating layer. Later, they were made of plastic, with foam insulation. They always had a lid that doubled as a cup, with a little, teacup style handle. Generations of men took them to work, and kids took them to school.) This virtually always resulted in an explanation of how special and filtered bottled water was. You apparently couldn't just pack tap water.
"What about all the waste?" I said. "You can go through dozens of disposable bottles, or refill one."
"You can recycle the single use ones," people would sniff at me, condescendingly thinking what a hick I was.
"Sure, you can. But how many people will?"
"Most of them, I'm sure."
And you know what? Most people didn't, and don't. For at least 15 years, the alarm has been raised - "The Earth is drowning in discarded plastic! Plastic bottles alone could circle the Earth's equator multiple times!" Estimates are that there will soon be more plastic than fish in the ocean.
You can now buy the widest assortment of portable liquid containers ever available: tall, short, insulated, non-insulated, with spouts, with straws, rigid sides, soft sides. They're in just about every store. Fountains often have a spot specifically designed for refilling water bottles.
And yet, we drown in discarded, unrecycled, single use plastic.
I told you so, back in the 80s.
