The Penultimate Word

I passed a Dunkin' Donuts Monday morning on my way to class at the Boston University Theatre. (Actually, I passed five, and three Starbucks, but let's focus.) The sign outside promoted a very special deal: Water, only 99 cents with purchase of a bagel. Only 99 cents? Sweet! "I love water. Sign me up," I said to myself. But then I stopped and considered it. I was already 40 minutes late to class due to a certain mode of public transportation breaking down (I won't name names, but here's a hint: It starts with a T), so I figured at that point I was late enough that contemplating the ironies and discrepancies of modern society on Massachusetts Avenue for a few minutes wouldn't really make a difference. By the time I was 42 minutes late, I had figured it out. Water used to be free.

In my childhood, I considered water the one exception to the phrase "Nothing is free." Water, after all, rains down from the heavens like an ice cream cone dropped from the fifth floor. Or rain. It fills lakes, streams, ponds, paper cups accidentally left outside, oceans, tributaries and reservoirs. And before they discovered the purification process, you could drink out of any of those, no charge. Now that our immune systems have become sissies from only drinking water that's "clean," we just can't do that anymore.

Heck, people are even made of water. We're about 80 percent water. That means if you weigh, for instance, 516 pounds, 412.8 pounds of that is water. And about 58.4 pounds of each Olsen twin is water. What? Bulimia? No, don't be offended, I meant the Olsen twins back when they were on Full House. They were very small. And precocious.

But you damned capitalists just couldn't handle something free, could you? I have a theory. The people who stamp random numbers and "Play Again" messages inside of bottle caps bought an extra number-stamping machine. "Fiddlesticks!" they cried. "What are we to do?" The people who glue stickers on the outsides of the bottles were stumped. The people who carve grooves and edges into the bottles, giving them their distinctive shapes, were perplexed. Even the people who steal the plastic from the proletariat were bamboozled. In the end, it was Jeff, a junior executive straight out of business school, who came forward with an answer. "Use the extra machine to make bottles of water and pretend you can't get water anywhere else for free." Jeff was not rewarded for his idea. You know how it goes: from each according to his ability, to each according to what is left over, after the people on top take what they want.

And as if bottling water weren't insulting enough, the beverage companies are now making flavored water. And lightly flavored water. It depends on how much flavor you want. Personally, if I'm going to drink something with flavor, I want it to be all-out. I want the heaviest flavor they can give me. I want 516 pounds of flavor. And for those who gave up soda for Lent, but can't quite handle it, beverage companies have invented the lightly carbonated, lightly flavored water. This, ladies and gentlemen, is just watered-down soda. It's cheaper to buy a bottle of soda and mix it with water. Which you can get for free at any sink.

Unless, of course, what you really wanted was fitness water. Fitness water is lightly flavored, but it has a little something extra that most water doesn't have -- calories. The most prominently advertised brand, Propel, is "fitness formulated" with 10 calories and three grams of carbs. Tell me if I'm wrong here, but aren't calories what you try to cut down on when you're getting fit? And don't I remember something about low-carb diets? Maybe I imagined that. Well, Propel is enhanced with vitamins B, C and E. It's too bad there's no other way to get those vitamins. Oh, wait, I forgot about eating. You can get vitamins from that, too.

It's gotten to the point where I now have to go into a restaurant and ask if they have water on tap. I've been told "no" before. Generally I ask for water, on the rocks, sans lemon. If the cup comes back with a slice of lemon in it, I instantly know the waiter doesn't know what "sans" means. I've also ordered water at a fast food joint and paid 15 cents for it. I was told, "It's for the cup. The water is free." Said restaurant refused to pour the water directly into my hands. I'll forgive them, though; that's the nature of a free-market economy. People need to make money. And according to the laws of limited wealth, they need to make it from someone else. And that someone is you.

Ethan Rosenberg, a freshman in the College of Fine Arts, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at ethanri@bu.edu.