While true, drinking from a garden hose has become the most commonly recited Interweb fact from Boomers and Gen Xers alike.
It’s a fact that pops up in my feed almost every week, and recently, it’s been making even more frequent appearances in Internet memes, videos, and other sundry posts.
There’s a certain charm to sipping water from a garden hose, which places us one or two steps behind in evolutionary development from one generation to the next.
Still, we feel qualified to boast about it to show others that you don’t need a three-quart stainless sippy cup holstered to your body every time you stroll through the neighborhood.
We assume that no kids born after 1980 drank from a garden hose, but I don’t believe that to be the case. However, I bet their hose water tasted better than ours because I can still taste sunbaked, hot rubber-tainted water if I think about it long enough.
I digress.
These thoughts crossed my mind while replacing the toilet tank water valve yesterday afternoon. For over two years, I had been intermittently reaching into the tank to raise the float a quarter of an inch to shut off the running water.
It didn’t bother me much, but I had also repeatedly tried adjusting it through float modifications, cleaning the valve while holding a water glass over it to avoid splashing the ceiling, along with whacking the tank with a wet towel when I got out of the shower, hoping to jar the valve into submission.
It’s not a secret that I live alone, with the dog, about seventy-three percent of the time, so I was the only one who could detect the micro-hiss (yes, that’s a thing. At least here) of the valve trickling water into the tank of the Gerber Viper toilet.
After watching videos of the unit digesting over ten pounds of fruit salad in one flush, I bought this specific model.
Have I ever flushed ten pounds of fruit salad? Nope. But if a company takes enough time to run through a series of tests with sliced melon, grapes, pineapple, and apples, who am I to believe I am worthy enough of clogging up such a divine system?
That was my other thought in the middle of emptying the tank and smacking my head off an overhead shelf that holds several curling irons sporting different diameters. They are not mine, but I picked them up, only noticing the nuances of curling irons as I replaced them and rubbed my head.
The Significant One is here this weekend, so I tried to put them in the correct order on the shelf.
The Gerber Viper has been good to my family. When I found the time, the least I could do was give it a new valve, similar to a heart replacement.
I bought the best one available, a Fluidmaster. Depending on your comfort level with splash issues, this has an additional adjustable valve to fill the bowl deeper or shallower. I went deeper since I live alone seventy-three percent of the time, and my septic tank is designed for a five-bedroom home. Indeed, another quart or two of water per day won’t tax the tank and septic field.
During my final tightening of the tank gasket, I realized drinking from a water hose is no big deal, and many kids, even kids born after 1980, have done it.
The nuance that needs to be specified is that as a roving youth, my friends and I drank from other people’s garden hoses, some people that we didn’t even know. Garden hoses were the public bubblers of the fifties, sixties, seventies, and, maybe, into the eighties.
We had no issue taking a drink from anyone’s water hose, and we were courteous enough to shut the valve tightly when we were done so as not to raise the water bill.
That’s the difference from then to now. We felt comfortable enough with our neighbors, even when they were unknown and unseen, to use their hose for a drink.
I thought about how much I missed that feeling as I closed up the top of the tank and flushed about twenty-five times to ensure I correctly adjusted the valve.
Things were not better because we drank from the hose. Things were better because neighbors didn’t have a problem if we drank from theirs; this is the distinction that must be touted.
Times were better, there is no doubt.
You’ll be glad to hear that my toilet tank is no longer hissing. And, no, I am not making fruit salad for Saturday’s family picnic.
Have a good one.
From the Jagged Edge, I remain,
TC