“Water… what doesn’t it do?”
What doesn’t water do? It works into just about anything, no bull. Water gets us clean. We need water to live, as a person cannot survive for long without it. Water helps us move people and products. Water is the home to countless species of animals. Water also claims lives, as anyone who engages in recreation in the water is well aware of. Water also can cause significant damage to man’s creations, through floods and leaks and such. But properly controlled, water serves to beautify man’s creations through fountains and bubble lights and much more. Water serves to relax us. Water helps create stress in us. Even our bodies are 80 percent water. A good example or how much water influences our lives is my day on June 5, 2004, a day when I went to Washington DC for an anti-war rally. I woke up at 4 AM, and cleaned myself in the shower. The medium through which I got clean was water. Then after getting dressed, I left the house to drive to Washington DC, in the rain. I stopped at a Sheetz in Mt. Jackson to buy some bottled water for the protest. I also washed my hands with water. And then I got back in the car and drove in the rain some more. When I reached Vienna, as I got off the Interstate, I accidentally nailed a giant puddle head-on while I was on the exit ramp, soaking the undercarriage of my car. This caused my car to strain at 25 MPH, but despite the pouring rain, my car still managed to limp into the parking garage, where I parked on a lower level to avoid the rain, to allow the water to drain out of my car’s undercarriage. On the Metro, the train was being run manually vs. on autopilot due to the rain causing wet rails. When the water was absent in the tunnels, the trains ran on autopilot again. Upon arrival at McPherson Square station, after crossing underneath the Potomac River, it was still raining, and so I used my umbrella to keep the water off. It rained on and off during the opening rally, and then stopped raining as we began to march, and later began to lightly drizzle. During the march, I sweated considerably as a march on a warm day will work up a sweat. I replaced some of the lost fluids by consuming some of the aforementioned bottled water. Afterwards, I peeled off my sweat and rain-drenched clothes, removing a layer of water from my skin, replacing them with warm, dry clothes. After the march, I headed over a large body of water, the Potomac River, on a Metro train, on my way to Pentagon City Mall in Arlington. There, I cooled off outside, at a table next to some fountains. After cooling off outside, I went inside and paid for an aqua-massage, which is where powerful jets of water massage you inside a small chamber to work out all of your tensions. Upon leaving Pentagon City Mall, it was drizzling outside again, and I went down to Huntington to make use of the self-cleaning restroom, which is completely touch-free, with the toilet automatically flushing upon activation of the door or the sink. Finally, after leaving Huntington, I went back to Vienna, where the water had drained out of the undercarriage of my car, and I went home. Look how much of a role water played in my day, and where would I have been without the role that water played? And so considering the amount of a role that water plays in the world, the question is, what doesn’t it do?
Date posted: June 9, 2004