A Drinker I Am Not

I am increasingly perplexed by the fact that my family seems not to require a normal intake of fluids. On a daily basis, I’d say we each consume less than two glasses of liquid, sometimes less. This is far below the “eight glasses a day” average. Are we living in a perpetual state of dehydration? Or have we adapted, boasting some evolutionary advantage that will benefit future generations should the KC Metro take on certain desert-like attributes?

The dearth of fluids in our lives is not a recent development. My childhood was peppered with extremely small glasses and cups, so small that one of my mother’s former boyfriends actually went out and bought a set of large glasses so that he could get more than two sips of a drink without having to refill. A good thirty percent of our kitchen glassware is actually composed of tiny shot glasses collected from a variety of places... none of which have ever contained alcohol. Instead it’s, “Here, have a shot of milk with that sandwich” or “Throw that limeade back like you mean it.” Needless to say, the top half of our dishwasher is increasingly aggravated over the difficulty of keeping multiple small shot glasses upright during the cleansing process.

At some meals we forgo beverages all together. It’s not so much that we forget; we’re just not thirsty. Nobody feels the need to pour a cup of water or orange juice. Why dirty more glassware?

This could explain a lot of things, like how mealtimes often degenerate into spirited rounds of choking on chicken. (Don’t ask why it’s always chicken, but somehow, it always is.) My mother hardly ever eats chicken without choking on it. It’s become an expected part of the chicken-eating routine. Mom cooks chicken, we sit down to eat chicken, and mom chokes on chicken. Once she has dislodged the unruly chicken parts, business continues as usual. Thus our typical dinner conversations are punctuated by the sounds of violent hacking, a sweet serenade indeed.

Maybe if we imbibed more fluids—or if we at least featured them at the dinner table as a pleasant side-option—incidences of chicken-choking could be averted or eliminated entirely. Are there other health risks we’ve yet to face? Will our skin reflect poorly on our strange liquid denial? Should we attempt to cultivate a dependence on fluids that we have hitherto ignored?

Then again, maybe there are hidden advantages. I remember attending a summer Bible camp a few years ago where the instructors insisted we consume a minimum of four Nalgenes of water each day. I usually managed to down about ¾ of one—after that, my body repudiated my efforts at hydration. Did my lack of fluids impinge upon my ability to withstand the physical demands of camp activities? Au contraire: when we weren't praying to Jesus, Allelulah! I was whooping the boys at basketball and finished first in a race from the tether ball to the tree stump. Other kids fell to the ground in droves, succumbing to scorching Kansas heat, sunburns, and one very fake case of asthma. Coincidence? Or did mysterious powers lie in the water I was not drinking?

There are other pleasing advantages to requiring less fluid: we rarely have to go to the bathroom. Our car trips are never beset by children whining “I have to go to the baaathrooom.” In fact, we have more trouble pushing it out than keeping it in.

Of course, this can presents an interesting problem, too, primarily in one setting: the doctor’s office. As a child, I could never never NEVER pee on command. Looking back, I recognize this as a necessary consequence of the fact that I didn’t have any liquids inside me that I could pee out. But at the time, it was devastating. My failing would come to light in great embarrassment as I sat in the doctor’s bathroom, focusing intently on the job at hand. As I clenched the small cup provided, I’d parade all sorts of images through my mind—pools, fountains, trickling streams, gushing waterfalls—all to no avail. “Just pee in the cup, Bridget,” I’d say to myself through clenched teeth. “Just pee in the cup.” Sometimes I’d be in the bathroom for half an hour or more before I’d reemerge, empty cup clasped in my sad little hand, cheeks stained from frustrated tears at my lack of success.

When the powers of positive thinking didn’t work, I tried other tactics, downing multiple cone cups of water from the Ozarka cooler in rapid succession. But my bladder, peeved by this unusual deluge of water, would stubbornly refuse to concede. Only hours after I’d left the doctor’s office would the water come out in torrents, long after I had a cup to pee into.

These days it’s a rare occasion in which I’m demanded to pee in a cup. Only serious firms and companies demand that prospective employees submit to drug tests, and as I am currently not yet a member of the “real adult” world, I’m exempt from compulsory liquid output. Until then, maybe I’ll try to drink more water.

But only from a shot glass.