You know America has all kinds of first world problems. I’m not the richest of people, but I’m sure wealthier than most when it comes to the world. I’ve decided that you know you are a first world country when plentiful water is available. And I’m not talking about hurricanes that put a city underwater, like our people in the Houston area. Last week there were a few instances when it came to water where I shook my head in bitterness.

First of all, we had two barbecues in a row. The first one was for my son’s football team. We were asked to bring an appetizer and a desert. We only brought a dessert. The main barbecue was hot dogs. I had four. There were so many hot dogs left over that me and 5 contestants could have been in the Nathan’s July 4th hot dog eating contest and had leftovers after that. Trays of food were left half empty (I’m a pessimist if you haven’t figured that out yet) and most people brought home half of what they brought to the barbecue. The most disturbing thing to me though was the kids had a water fight afterwards.

I get it, they are kids. And it was hot out. And they just completed a practice for 2 hours. They needed to cool off a bit. But the part that was disturbing was they were doing the water fight with bottled water. When I was a kid, we would have wasted the hose water, or water from the kitchen sink. But that isn’t good enough for kids these days. They had to use bottled water. 3 quarters of the world barely has drinkable water, and our kids are freaking having a water fight with bottled water. What ditch water isn’t good enough these days? My wife and I but the kabosh on my kid participating in that noise, but other parents just let it happen. What next roasting dollar bills on an open flame? Using diamonds as bullets in Nerf Wars? I’m pretty sure you can’t get any more first world than a bottled water fight.

Later in the week, we were bringing my daughter to play practice. She had missed her first practice last week, because she was in Washington, and it was going to be a marathon of a practice because she had to audition and then learn all kinds of new songs and dances. So it went from 5 pm til 8 pm. She had forgotten to bring a water bottle that she usually brought. And it was too far to go home (like a whole mile away) so we saw that in this golf clubhouse where she was practicing there was a little grill open. We saw that they had bottled water, so we decided to get her water there.

As were were waiting for the worker to come out and cashier us up, my wife got out 2 dollars for the water, because she assumed that a golf clubhouse would charge a little more for bottled water. She was hoping to get a little change. Both she and I were not prepared for what would come out of this guy’s mouth. “$4.15 please.”

My face contorted into an obvious bitter face when those words came out. My wife kept a calm, cool face, but inside I knew she was dying. My daughter immediately felt guilt. A swirling of emotions, and all kinds of questions entered my head.

“How could this guy have said those words with a straight face?” “What kind of magic healing powers and superpowers are given to the drinker of this expensive water?” “What mountain stream did this water come from that caused such high prices of water?” “Is there a shortage of water in this area, one mile from Walmart that they could only make profit if they charged $4.15 for this water?” “How can I get in on this huge money making scam?” and “How many spit takes happen on this counter, every time this kid tells people how much this water is?” and most important, “How many people avoid doing spit takes with this water, knowing every spit take costs a dollar to do?”

I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard this. I know golf courses are ritzy and stuff and are only for the elite people, but I think even Bill Gates would pass on this water if he was asked to pay that much.

Water is cool and all (if you refrigerate it) and fairly essential to life, but this week was the H and 2 O’s were a little ridiculous. Stop the price gouging. Stop the bottled water fights. And stop the hurricaning all over the place. You need to be a little more responsible water. Cause you may be life giving, but you are also kind of killing me this week too.

ARRRRGGGGHHHHHH

Bitter Water you doing Ben