...was this notion that everyone should drink eight eight-ounce glasses of water a day. I thought this idea had been fully debunked, until I saw an article about it on Yahoo! yesterday and thought maybe it had been re-bunked. I don't know. When I went looking for it again I couldn't find it for the life of me, so I wonder if some intern had put an old piece out there by mistake. Anyway, when it had been debunked a while ago by health professionals, scientists, doctors, or whoever does the debunking in these types of matters, the professional debunkers said that the average person would generally get enough water from all the various foods and drinks he or she would consume in a typical day. This includes even caffeinated beverages, which were previously thought to reduce one's intake of water. They were called diuretics, whatever that means, which were somehow bad for you until it was pointed out that water is also a diuretic. It was all very confusing and a generation spent half their lives in the bathroom as a result. This always seemed odd to me. While everyone else was busy chugging water they would preach to me the wonders of staying hydrated. When I would protest that I wasn't thirsty, people would say that I really was and just didn't know it. Huh? You see, by the time you feel thirsty it's already too late. Too late for what? I feel just fine, thank you. Then they would shake their heads at me as they reached for their ever-present water bottle. I'm a little surprised that holsters didn't come back into fashion.
Every once in a while I'd wonder if everyone else was right about this water thing except me. Was I just being my usual stubborn, cantankerous self? Nah! Should I just give in and start drinking a ton of water? And then one day I looked at my dog and noticed that she wasn't running to her water bowl every five minutes and drinking the equivalent of eight eight-ounce glasses a day. I guess it was because she couldn't read and didn't know any better. Or maybe she knew exactly how much water to drink. You see, she had a water strategy, too. She'd wait until she got thirsty and then saunter over to her water bowl and lap up a few ounces, although not necessarily eight. (Not only could she not read, she couldn't count very well, either. At least that's what I always assumed. Maybe she was awesome at it.) It wasn't a very complicated strategy, but it seemed to do the trick. She died of old age, not dehydration. (We actually put her "to sleep," although she was old.) So on I went through life scowling as everyone around me compulsively hydrated, hydrated, hydrated. Until one day everyone Just Got Tired of the whole thing. They got tired of constantly running to the bathroom, they got tired of paying money for what had always been free, and they got tired of carrying water bottles everywhere they went. (One guy on my train used to have three bottles of water sticking out of his briefcase every morning. I used to wonder, where does this guy work, the desert? Don't they have running water in the office somewhere? I wonder if he still does that. I wonder if he feels silly whenever he thinks back on that. If I ever see him again, I'll be happy to remind him. That image is forever burned into my retina.) So everyone got tired of it, the debunkers did their debunking, and the world went back to the way it had always been. And then one day while I was getting a drink from a water fountain someone walked by and said, "Hey, you don't have to do that anymore. It's been debunked."
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