As an individual that stands out in the herd, metaphorically (standing out  is always dangerous, I know), I don’t tend to follow trends.  Blending in isn’t my strong suit.  A current, or recent trend, was to be seen carrying a disposable coffee cup when in public.  At least for a while there, everybody was doing it.  Walking down the street, going grocery shopping, at the mall.  It was almost like a fashion statement.  Anybody who was somebody had a cup of warm liquid in their hand.  Perhaps in my case economics and personal choice made the decision not to do this.  Economically, a five-dollar cup of coffee is out of my range; I’m not a hedge-fund manager.  I haven’t gone out for coffee in some years because of the personal choice aspect of it: I gave up caffeine.  This was several years ago.  I didn’t like being addicted to daily coffee, so I stopped, cold turkey.  But I still like the taste of coffee—that was hard earned.

These days the personal water bottle industry must be a good one to be into.  I recently visited friends and I noticed everyone had their personal water bottle.  I tend to leave mine at home.  Yes, I have one for the basic reason that running downstairs to refill a glass with water multiple times a day would mean that I’d miss an awful lot of work.  I drink quite a bit of water in a day.  About a gallon when I’m not traveling.  In my regimented life, I have a water bottle that I fill four times a day.  I know its capacity and, trying to stay healthy, I drink it down whether I feel like it or not.  I tend to leave it at home, however, as I mentioned.  At this gathering of friends (which was at somebody’s house) everyone who didn’t live there had their personal water bottle.  I was just using a glass from the kitchen.

There seems to be a trend of being seen with your water bottle.  I recently had to buy a new one because I’d been using an old stainless steel bottle well over a decade old.  It’d been put in the freezer with water in it before a hike and the bottom had, naturally enough, convexed to the pressure.  Being the thrifty sort, I pulled out a hammer and rendered it unlikely to tip over again.  It worked for years, but had become unstable again. Since it sits next to a computer all day, I couldn’t risk it.  The first thing I discovered is that water bottles meeting my exact specs were very expensive.  It’s a trend.  So at our friends’ house one of them offered to buy me a cup of coffee.  We live in a day when you can get a decaf latte with oat milk, so I indulged in an old habit.  As we walked down the chilly street, coffee cups in hand, I realized that I’m just like everybody else.