Bottled Water Fans
A handful of years ago, I was waiting in a full room full of my fellow prospective Jurors, wondering if maybe I shouldn’t have fished around for a copy of the ultimate “Get out of Jury Duty” book to read in waiting — Our Enemies in Blue.
After showing us a video which showed an elderly-ish woman going through her duty of Jury Duty, interspersed with the stories of the Defendant and Plantif going to court, which ended with all three parties saying “It didn’t matter how the result came out. Just that the process was served,”, a sentiment I found difficult to imagine for whomever was the losing party in the court case — and the video might have been more interesting if that ending had been shown (though, I suppose, that would have missed the point being instilled in us)…
the woman went through a long and pointless time-filler through procedural issues, the time-filling designed as much to provide something slightly less boring than the boredom of staring at a blank wall for however long she gave the spiel.
At one point she directed our attention to the vending machines, suggesting that if we were hungry or thirsty, there were Frito-Lay and Mars and Pepsi and Coke products available for our coins.
One thing popped out at me as a little bit odd.
“And, for you Bottled Water fans, there is bottled water available in those machines.”
Bottled Water fans? I never heard that phrase before in my life. She delivered three or four sentences on the availability of bottled water, and how bottled water fans had it immediately there for their pursual. It was that type of talking.
Pepsi has just recently had to admit the obvious, that which we all already knew. Their brand of bottled water is tap water. It is a joke which has been delivered around me through this long era of bottled water fandom, and if I had a nickel for every time I have heard somebody joke “on the square” about Bottled Water being tap water priced upward, I would have enough money to have wasted on bottled water for the past few years.
I suppose that woman is still there, delivering daily directions to potential jurors, and directing all bottled water fans to the bottled water — as they schedule their next weekend for their Bottled Water Fan Convention, which I think is the same venue as the “Watching Paint Dry” Convention, and “Convention of Dry Toast Eaters”.