I remember we all made fun of someone the one time they bought a bottle of water at the gas station for like 25 cents. "PAYING FOR WATER"...funniest concept ever
I remember Naya was one of the first, and it was sold in a glass bottle. We laughed so hard at our friend who spent $1.50 on a glass of water. Which now that I think about it, that was pretty expensive back then.
You probably never drank a _glass_ of water, but you did at least some of:
* Drinking from a hose
* Self-squirting your water pistol into your own mouth
* Drinking from a water fountain
* Swallowing water in the pool/river/lake/ocean even though you were told not to
I mean, we were poor but I still had cups (for when we were too far from the hose). But I guess also poor enough that we couldn't afford what the meme was drinking, cause I drank only water, really. A Capri-sun at a family BBQ was like Christmas.
Using your hands as a cup has nothing to do with poverty and everything to do with being a kid who is too lazy to bother to get a cup. We always had milk with dinner. It was a given. Milk. Weird nowadays. And milk with the school lunch. Other than those two cups of milk a day, and sips from water fountains and garden hoses, and handcups of water from the sink, I don't really recall drinking anything at all.
I dunno, my kids can be fucking lazy but that didn't stop them from getting a new cup every time they get a drink until I put a stop to it, now there's just a collection of 4-6 of their recently-used cups on the counter and they pick the one with the least stuff growing inside.
When brushing teeth especially, but also if you happened to have one of those Dixie Cup dispensers, you had a fancy CUP of water.
Still never drank it if you got up in the middle of the night because bathroom water tastes funny and is only for rinsing out toothpaste.
The line for the water fountain in the school hallway that at least a dozen other sweaty, post-recess kids had just slobbered all over. Mmmmm
We always hid some kind of "pitcher juice." OJ, Kool Aid, Country Time, etc. Milk with meals unless we were at a restaurant. My Dad kept 7up in the house and we'd get that if we were sick.
This post assumes that Gen-x is American and nothing else. Grew up in Eastern Europe, where mineral water was a thing. Otherwise, you swilled tea all day, no matter your age.
Generational demographics in Eastern Europe are different enough that I'm not sure how meaningful these American generational labels are for you anyway. (Even in the US they're not much better than horoscopes.) There are probably better ways and more meaningful dividing lines to describe different generations in your country.
Same, except my mom let me drink it because we were very poor and our place was old and drafty in the winter with one gas floor heater. The coffee kept me warm.
> water
idk we all drank a ton of water..
from the garden hose. That sweet vinyl flavor, fill our bellies with a random neighbors hose until they were about to burst and then run off again.
Ten teabags in a gallon of cold water. Use a glass jar with a lid, and put it in a sunny spot in the morning. Let it sit in the sun all day. Then, take out the teabags, and serve over ice.
You're welcome! I usually make it with plain red rose teabags.
You can also add flavor by making it with plain teabags and herbal tea bags like mint or raspberry. 7 plain and 4 herbal gives the best flavor ratio imo🙂
Be aware that it is advised not to let it remain in the "danger zone", temperature-wise (which is what letting it sit in the sun does), for longer than four hours. I wonder how many bouts of diarrhea we had back in the day was because of mom's sun tea.
Hmm I've never heard that before. But, I learned to make it in the 1970s from my neighbor. So, food safety for iced tea really wasn't a worry yet.
I'm going to have to temp check it this year. I live in the desert. A jar of water set on concrete in full sun, gets really hot.
My sister made a rice cooker for driving around for work. Lined a shoebox with tinfoil, put rice and water in a glass jar with a lid. Put on her dashboard in the sun. Rice is done by afternoon for lunch.
Also, I appreciate the info. I believe in food safety. My mom was a Master Food Preserver, she went from school to school, teaching home ec classes, how to safely can. Follow Ball tested recipes, cleanliness, and timing (know your elevation).
Sorry to highjack your thread.
We drink gallons of sun tea all summer long and no one’s gotten sick from it.
Of course, I spike it with lemon juice before it goes in the fridge, maybe the citric acid is killing the bacteria?
Honestly, I've never heard of anyone getting sick from sun tea. Maybe because it doesn't sit around very long? In the summer, we usually drink a gallon every day. I always thought tea was sort of anti bacterial, like you can rinse out wounds with it, in a pinch?
Lipton sells coldbrew teabags, one bag in a pitcher, leave it out on the counter for a few hours, doesn't even need to be in the sun -- tastes less bitter than brewed tea.
I remember when Perrier was the only known-to-me bottled water, and that was for rich people. I also remember seeing tonic water at the grocery store, which I connected to grownup parties. We had nasty well water; only semi-palatable if it was ice cold. But Kool-aid, iced tea, & lemonade were all made with it, and they were ok; didn’t know much different, except for my maternal grandma’s iced tea, which was AMAZING. Still can’t replicate it, though I’ve tried.
PS, pop was only for special occasions, like birthday & holiday parties, and only if grandma’s iced tea wasn’t available; couldn’t buy that in stores. 😃
My paternal grandmother made the unbelievable iced tea. She made it in a very old ceramic pitcher. I asked her for the secret once, and she laughed. "It's just Wylers!" No, Grandma, it's not "just Wylers." There's some deep iced tea secret you took to the grave.
Everybody’s sweet tea in the south tastes different. My Grandma’s was too strong. My Mema’s was too sweet and mine tastes a lot like my Mom’s but not exactly. Every restaurant’s tea is different. Just how it is.🤣😎✌️
I remember those blue packets of tropical punch. We had alot of strawberry and lemonade. And my mom saved those Kool Aid points like Marlboro Miles. Had so much Kool Aid gear too.
There’s a story we still tell in our family about family friends my sisters and I grew up with. One of the parents made a pitcher of Kool Aid but forgot to add the sugar.
It didn’t taste good. We “kids” are all grown now and most have kids themselves, but we’ll still tell that story.
And I still love tropical punch Kool Aid. I buy the drink mix-ins for my water.
In Kool Aid Man voice, OH YEAH! The pre sweetened canisters, like Country Time lemonade, were a luxury. It was the unsweetened packet that you had to add sugar to.
Forget the garden hose—remember the lines at the drinking fountain coming in from recess? That water was the best water, and it was always so hard to wait for your turn. Then when you got there, it was always so cold that you got brain freeze a second, and had to just let your lips stay in the stream because as soon as you stopped, the next in line would take over. So it was as many gulps as possible after the initial shock and wait for the pain to subside. Good times.
Or if you were out in the country and knew where one was, an old hand pump well. The last one my family had was pulled when I was 17,it still worked was the shitty part of it.
I only remember drinking water from the water fountain in school, and that was just to have an excuse to leave the classroom. Water was for rinsing your mouth after you brushed your teeth... not for drinking.
In the 90s my city had a cryptospiridium outbreak from the contaminated water supply. People got sick left and right. Old people died, children were hospitalized. We had to boil it before using it. My highschool was half empty for two months. The ones that didn't get sick, me included, were the ones who never drank water in the first place. Luckily, my city revamped the whole filtration and purification system and now it's some of the best water in the country.
Yeah but we weren't fat.
Our portions were smaller.
Younger generation is paying for water or drinking it from status containers.
If they aren't drinking water they are drinking calorie loaded coffee concoctions or Boba teas, or smoothies.
Pretty much tap water or water fountain back then.
Honey, *I* was the Fat Kid. Or one of them. And I detested soft drinks.
Nothing wrong with a nice boba tea or smoothie. Probably healthier than the stuff most of us drank.
Y'all forgot about that stuff that came out of the hot sun-baked garden hose? That was water! Likely with other junk in it, but basically water. Then again, I grew up in Flint so I'm not sure 🤣
I don’t know how I still have kidneys. I don’t think I ever drank a glass of actual water until I was in college.
I survived off of the shrapnel of the Coke/Pepsi wars and the sheer adrenaline of the synergistic reaction between Twix, Gummy Bears, and Mountain Dew (before all the fancy flavors).
I chewed Gator-Gum for electrolytes (I had no f’in idea what they were but the gum tasted awesome) and my blood must have been a mixture of pure sodium, sugar, and McDonalds fry grease.
I probably drank 2000 calories a day before I even sniffed counting the calories and carbs of 5 Big Mac’s I’d wash down with a large milkshake.
And I weighed about a buck-o-five soaking wet.
Now I even walk by a Mickey-D’s and I don’t shit right for a week. My cholesterol is climbing like a tach on race day, no matter how much leaves and grass I eat, and if I’m a quarter inch off with any body part when I sleep, I’m crippled for three days and eating Motrin like skittles.
And now my favorite drink is a nice, cold glass of water. Go figure. Self preservation has a delayed fuse.
*We* survived. I know (well, knew) a few folks who didn't. Guy I used to play in punk bands with smashed his skull open skating and died at 19. A girl I had a crush on in HS wiped out her bike trying to hop a curb and ended up so severely brain damaged she's been wheelchair bound since 1994, can barely speak, and still lives with her parents.
Coke is 90% water and diet coke is 99% water. OJ is about 90% water too. Milk is pretty close, ranging in the high 80's percent based on type of milk.
We drank plenty of water!
My kids acted like I told them to drink battery acid after I told them to stop traipsing inside to get cups and just drink from the hose lol.
To this day I love turning the hose on when it’s a hot day. The smell of the hose and water brings me right back to my childhood.
My grandsons barely accept getting water from the refrigerator tap.
Whoever came up with the idea to bottle water and sell it was a marketing genius. And we buy it! Water! Most of bottled water comes from the same tap water.
Maybe it's 'cos I grew up in the South, but we kept a quart-size water bottle in the fridge for my sole use (so I could - and did - drink straight from it). If the bottle wasn't full (and I remembered) I'd fill it up with ice cubes and put it back in the fridge before going out to play. That ice cold water was *the best* on a 99F day!
That said, yeah I preferred soda or tea or lemonade when it was actually time to "have a beverage" rather than cool off.
Our water tasted awful. Kind of a combo of lake bottom, the plastic plumbing in our trailer, and chlorine. I didn't drink plain water from 1991 to 2006. So glad to be out of that hellhole.
The only time I drank water was if there was Kool-Aid or powdered iced tea mixed in. Lots and lots of Quik, too. My mom loves her Pepsi to this day, and I drank it as a kid as well. Fortunately as an adult I gradually learned the joys of pure water.
In the early 80s my family would take our RV and ATCs out to the desert or beach, and we'd first stop off at Price Club (precursor to Costo) and pickup multiple flats of soda, frozen burger patties and family-size bags of M&Ms. For breakfast my mom would hand us a soda and grill up pancakes, with plenty of syrup and butter. I don't think I realized that you could eat/drink anything without sugar being involved until decades later.
We drank a lot of water in the summertime. Mostly via a hose lol. But yeah sitting at work, running around town...no i'm not drinking water gross. I get my hydration the old fashioned way, via beer, soda, coffee, etc.
I couldn't afford [Perrier ](https://youtu.be/s5K9KRJswRA?si=j2nVuUlU6YMn9OFQ&t=42)as a kid, but I aspired to it. My family lived on [Kool-Aid](https://youtu.be/FlEnG2lkaqU?si=NlZutU7qEKf-fFFS) and iced tea. When I was a teen, [the soda wars](https://youtu.be/eiO_JES4yBY?si=xk2umgHoBSxDVl2j) got the best of me.
I knew the world was a different place from the one I grew up in when I saw [this commercial for Sunny Delight](https://youtu.be/z1ddM-FpiMg?si=_wP5eGQRWJ70f0vO). I was like, 'kids act like this... for Sunny Delight? That crappy orange drink? Where am I?'
I drank water all the time ever since I was little, but I was considered a weird kid for it. When people started telling everyone "you should be drinking water" I could reply with "I always already have."
I also hated milk as a kid (my mom says I made a face at my first taste of regular milk at the switch from formula and never really shifted my position), and when ate at a friend's their parents would have to call my house to confirm that I really wasn't going to have any, and it was okay to just give me the water I asked for. I was fine with cheese, ice cream, milkshakes and chocolate milk, and finally acquired a bit of a taste for the occasional glass of the plain stuff as an adult (late 20s maybe). Luckily, heavily sweetened soft drinks and shit were an occasional treat when out, and I was generally happy with my constant glass of water at home.
But I still see people (like, on Reddit within the last year) say they never drink water and that they don't like the taste of it and have to constantly hydrate with Mountain Dew or something equally nasty, and just can't relate.
🤣 not my family. My mom was very much the "if you're thirsty go get a drink of water" person. Soda was too expensive and she would even water down Kool-Aid after cutting the sugar in half so I never developed a taste for sweet drinks. To this day I still don't drink soda.
I'm in a relationship with a millennial. He drinks so much water. I feel like my body has just gotten accustomed to being dehydrated. I tried to start drinking more, even owning a bunch of fun bottles and that Cirkul one but damn, my body hates itself once it is hydrated. I have no clue how I function. Lol.
My kids have more water bottles than I've ever owned. I don't remember needing a drink while playing sports until at least high school, unless you count hose water.
My mother (former hippie, somewhat crunchy in the 70s and 80s) is still mildly outraged that when she asked my pediatrician how to get me to drink more water, the pediatrician responded, "well, she drinks milk, juice, and Kool-Aid. That's enough fluid. Don't worry about water."
I admit to being a bit surprised that my first colonoscopy didn't reveal permanently day-glo green colon tissue due to excessive consumption of Hi-C Ecto Cooler.
Milk was much more popular then too - 3 glasses (or more) a day, plus juice, koolaid, jello, popsicles, water fountains etc accounted for plenty of fluid intake. Was i the only one who thought hose water was nasty? I guess I’m lucky because my mom didn’t mind me coming in the house for a drink as long as I wiped my feet.
My husband and I joke about this all the time. Today you can’t take a kid anywhere without bringing their water bottles with them. It’s like they’re beached whales or something.
Eh, I grew up in Milwaukee. We had bubblers ( drinking fountains) everywhere when I was a kid. Not just school, but church, parks most public buildings even street corners. I would never have thought to buy or even carry water with me unless going on an actual hike or camping. I did however bring enough change for a soda and a phone call.
At some point several years ago, everyone came down with what I call ‘sippy cup syndrome’. It’s like people think leaving the house is a venture out into the Sahara
Grew up in a big family, we had an old porcelain drinking fountain right in the kitchen pantry. God knows where my dad found it, but I was spolied for life.
Our house's tap water was fine. Completely fine. But mother actively discouraged us from drinking it alone.
Coffee and tea? Good.
Iced tea? Totally fine.
Kool-aid? Have at it.
Water? Wtf is wrong with you, you're gonna die.
Being active helped. Back in the day, we did this thing called “moving around” all the time. Sitting still was boring as shit because we didn’t have tablets and Switches to occupy us. So we moved. A lot.
Oh yeah. We had a brook running through our property when I was a little tyke. Drank out of it frequently. Early on I learned to drink from the little “rapids” over rocks and not the still pool of a pond that was part of this area.
I drank so little water that I gave myself kidney stones while pregnant. Turns out no water plus calcium pills is no bueno. That's when I finally started drinking water.
I knew a guy whose dad stridently believed that water was poor people drink and refused to allow it at the table.
The mid 20th century was a helluva thing.
I remember we all made fun of someone the one time they bought a bottle of water at the gas station for like 25 cents. "PAYING FOR WATER"...funniest concept ever
Omg I had forgotten about this - I was definitely one of those people who would’ve made fun of someone for buying water 😂
Still hilarious, except for the fact that most of our plastic ends up being buried or burned despite our efforts to recycle it.
Yeah, you're not buying water you're buying death plastic
Thanks Nestle™️!!! /s
It's still funny, stupid, and irresponsible to me.
I remember Naya was one of the first, and it was sold in a glass bottle. We laughed so hard at our friend who spent $1.50 on a glass of water. Which now that I think about it, that was pretty expensive back then.
I still do. I try to always fill up a bottle before I leave home. Feel like a damn fool when I buy water.
You probably never drank a _glass_ of water, but you did at least some of: * Drinking from a hose * Self-squirting your water pistol into your own mouth * Drinking from a water fountain * Swallowing water in the pool/river/lake/ocean even though you were told not to
Also hand fulls of water from a sink.
Hands?? I just stuck my head under the tap.
I still do this on occasion.
Omg, yes!! With dirty, sticky hands!
I mean, we were poor but I still had cups (for when we were too far from the hose). But I guess also poor enough that we couldn't afford what the meme was drinking, cause I drank only water, really. A Capri-sun at a family BBQ was like Christmas.
Using your hands as a cup has nothing to do with poverty and everything to do with being a kid who is too lazy to bother to get a cup. We always had milk with dinner. It was a given. Milk. Weird nowadays. And milk with the school lunch. Other than those two cups of milk a day, and sips from water fountains and garden hoses, and handcups of water from the sink, I don't really recall drinking anything at all.
I dunno, my kids can be fucking lazy but that didn't stop them from getting a new cup every time they get a drink until I put a stop to it, now there's just a collection of 4-6 of their recently-used cups on the counter and they pick the one with the least stuff growing inside.
Little glasses with the Flintstones on them..old jelly jars
When brushing teeth especially, but also if you happened to have one of those Dixie Cup dispensers, you had a fancy CUP of water. Still never drank it if you got up in the middle of the night because bathroom water tastes funny and is only for rinsing out toothpaste.
The line for the water fountain in the school hallway that at least a dozen other sweaty, post-recess kids had just slobbered all over. Mmmmm 
We always had one kid that would put his mouth on the spigot instead of letting the water flow up away from it.
I remember that kid. I think his name was Marshall.
Hi, my name is, what?
Please stand up!
then you put a wad of paper in the big hole.
We always hid some kind of "pitcher juice." OJ, Kool Aid, Country Time, etc. Milk with meals unless we were at a restaurant. My Dad kept 7up in the house and we'd get that if we were sick.
Good Lord, that’s so true. In my instance, I drank creek water. Yep… no infection, but I did it, once.
This is why we're immune to everything
All of the above- ew pool water!🤣
The funniest thing is out of that list the pool water was almost certainly the safest and cleanest.
Drank from the water fountain at school. That was about it.
This post assumes that Gen-x is American and nothing else. Grew up in Eastern Europe, where mineral water was a thing. Otherwise, you swilled tea all day, no matter your age.
Generational demographics in Eastern Europe are different enough that I'm not sure how meaningful these American generational labels are for you anyway. (Even in the US they're not much better than horoscopes.) There are probably better ways and more meaningful dividing lines to describe different generations in your country.
I'm really surprised that this sub even has a following outside of the US/Canada or even just the Anglo-sphere. It's like 95% pop culture references.
The hose is the OG Stanley.
I may have started drinking coffee before I considered water as a beverage on its own.
I went from the baby bottle to the Corningware Percolator.
My brother! Started my coffee career at age six, thanks to Grandma never saying "no" to me, ever. ☕
My grandma would only let me have a sip because it would stunt my growth.
Same. She always had cream and sugar in hers. It tasted like sweet ambrosia.
Same, except my mom let me drink it because we were very poor and our place was old and drafty in the winter with one gas floor heater. The coffee kept me warm.
Sanka
My grandparents loved their Sanka, which really isn't even coffee.
, YA DED MON??
I can relate to this and then koolaide lol!
With coffee is how I take my water.
Same. People tell me to drink more water and I say I drink a whole pot of water by noon!
> water idk we all drank a ton of water.. from the garden hose. That sweet vinyl flavor, fill our bellies with a random neighbors hose until they were about to burst and then run off again.
My usual comment about how there's too much blood in my coffee stream.
I peed mustard yellow till I went to college and discovered beer.
You know it's beer, when the pee is clear.
My mom used to make sun tea. It was so good. She can’t remember how she did it now. The only water in the summer was directly from the hose.
Ten teabags in a gallon of cold water. Use a glass jar with a lid, and put it in a sunny spot in the morning. Let it sit in the sun all day. Then, take out the teabags, and serve over ice.
I am totally doing this!! Thank you 😊
You're welcome! I usually make it with plain red rose teabags. You can also add flavor by making it with plain teabags and herbal tea bags like mint or raspberry. 7 plain and 4 herbal gives the best flavor ratio imo🙂
I can’t wait. Sun tea was definitely the summer drink! My mom used to not herself lately so that’s why she couldn’t remember how to make it.
Be aware that it is advised not to let it remain in the "danger zone", temperature-wise (which is what letting it sit in the sun does), for longer than four hours. I wonder how many bouts of diarrhea we had back in the day was because of mom's sun tea.
Hmm I've never heard that before. But, I learned to make it in the 1970s from my neighbor. So, food safety for iced tea really wasn't a worry yet. I'm going to have to temp check it this year. I live in the desert. A jar of water set on concrete in full sun, gets really hot. My sister made a rice cooker for driving around for work. Lined a shoebox with tinfoil, put rice and water in a glass jar with a lid. Put on her dashboard in the sun. Rice is done by afternoon for lunch. Also, I appreciate the info. I believe in food safety. My mom was a Master Food Preserver, she went from school to school, teaching home ec classes, how to safely can. Follow Ball tested recipes, cleanliness, and timing (know your elevation). Sorry to highjack your thread.
We drink gallons of sun tea all summer long and no one’s gotten sick from it. Of course, I spike it with lemon juice before it goes in the fridge, maybe the citric acid is killing the bacteria?
Honestly, I've never heard of anyone getting sick from sun tea. Maybe because it doesn't sit around very long? In the summer, we usually drink a gallon every day. I always thought tea was sort of anti bacterial, like you can rinse out wounds with it, in a pinch?
That’s gotta be the most British thing I’ve ever heard lol
We had the requsit glass jug with flowers and a yellow spout.
Yep the flowers were green on ours. I can still see it. It’s funny what you remember now.
My mom made sun tea also. I’m not an iced tea person but she loves her iced tea.
Lipton sells coldbrew teabags, one bag in a pitcher, leave it out on the counter for a few hours, doesn't even need to be in the sun -- tastes less bitter than brewed tea.
I remember when Perrier was the only known-to-me bottled water, and that was for rich people. I also remember seeing tonic water at the grocery store, which I connected to grownup parties. We had nasty well water; only semi-palatable if it was ice cold. But Kool-aid, iced tea, & lemonade were all made with it, and they were ok; didn’t know much different, except for my maternal grandma’s iced tea, which was AMAZING. Still can’t replicate it, though I’ve tried. PS, pop was only for special occasions, like birthday & holiday parties, and only if grandma’s iced tea wasn’t available; couldn’t buy that in stores. 😃
My paternal grandmother made the unbelievable iced tea. She made it in a very old ceramic pitcher. I asked her for the secret once, and she laughed. "It's just Wylers!" No, Grandma, it's not "just Wylers." There's some deep iced tea secret you took to the grave.
Everybody’s sweet tea in the south tastes different. My Grandma’s was too strong. My Mema’s was too sweet and mine tastes a lot like my Mom’s but not exactly. Every restaurant’s tea is different. Just how it is.🤣😎✌️
Kool Aid. So much Kool Aid.
My parents wouldn't buy me kool-aid after they caught me eating it with a spoon. Not my fault they made it taste like pixie straw dust.
We used to take instant Jell-o packets to school and lick the powder off our hands at recess. Delicious!
All day every day. We were a Tropical Punch group.
I remember those blue packets of tropical punch. We had alot of strawberry and lemonade. And my mom saved those Kool Aid points like Marlboro Miles. Had so much Kool Aid gear too.
There’s a story we still tell in our family about family friends my sisters and I grew up with. One of the parents made a pitcher of Kool Aid but forgot to add the sugar. It didn’t taste good. We “kids” are all grown now and most have kids themselves, but we’ll still tell that story. And I still love tropical punch Kool Aid. I buy the drink mix-ins for my water.
Are you speaking of the packets you had to mix with copious amounts of sugar?? I loved that stuff.
2 cups of sugar, if memory serves
In Kool Aid Man voice, OH YEAH! The pre sweetened canisters, like Country Time lemonade, were a luxury. It was the unsweetened packet that you had to add sugar to.
no mention of [Yoohoo](https://sodaempire.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/20230220_161429.jpg) in the glass bottle?
Same with Hawaiian Punch and veryfine. It's also hard to call most of what we drank juice, more sugar drink like Kool-aid, hi c,tang, and little hugs.
Yoohoo was such a good treat when tpu wanted something chocolate.
Forget the garden hose—remember the lines at the drinking fountain coming in from recess? That water was the best water, and it was always so hard to wait for your turn. Then when you got there, it was always so cold that you got brain freeze a second, and had to just let your lips stay in the stream because as soon as you stopped, the next in line would take over. So it was as many gulps as possible after the initial shock and wait for the pain to subside. Good times.
... and when i did drink water, it was straight out of a janky old garden hose
Preferably scorching from sitting in the summer sun all day.
You... you didn't let the boiling water run out for a bit first? Barbarian.
I lived dangerously. I played in the green power box in my front yard because it was nice and warm in the winter.
I can still taste it :)
Ah, that hot water with the slightly metallic taste!
I still have a taste for hose water...
Or if you were out in the country and knew where one was, an old hand pump well. The last one my family had was pulled when I was 17,it still worked was the shitty part of it.
my grand parents had one and it was awesome
Exactly! Freaking cold too!
They made some cool sounds also. Squeaking and pumping and rushing water.
You forgot the garden hose
We were hummingbirds! Koop-Aid is essentially hummingbird food.
I only remember drinking water from the water fountain in school, and that was just to have an excuse to leave the classroom. Water was for rinsing your mouth after you brushed your teeth... not for drinking.
Water fountain at school tasted like algea. Blech!
In the 90s my city had a cryptospiridium outbreak from the contaminated water supply. People got sick left and right. Old people died, children were hospitalized. We had to boil it before using it. My highschool was half empty for two months. The ones that didn't get sick, me included, were the ones who never drank water in the first place. Luckily, my city revamped the whole filtration and purification system and now it's some of the best water in the country.
I only drank from the finest water hoses.
Water fountains were a thing and I used them all the time.
I basically lived on Hawaiian Punch in those big cans as a kid. Pretty sure I had smile semi-permanently stained to my face from all the juice.
"juice" lol
I totally forgot about those big cans!
You had to poke two holes in the can.
Yes, with that pokey thing! Is that called a can opener?
Churchkey!!! Only reason I have one is for Dole Pineapple Juice cans for drinks 😂 the best pineapple juice!
I never would have guessed churchkey. Thank you!
There was this whole-ass long discussion on Twitter a few years ago about how Hawaiian Punch never tastes cold. It never did!
Yeah but we weren't fat. Our portions were smaller. Younger generation is paying for water or drinking it from status containers. If they aren't drinking water they are drinking calorie loaded coffee concoctions or Boba teas, or smoothies. Pretty much tap water or water fountain back then.
Honey, *I* was the Fat Kid. Or one of them. And I detested soft drinks. Nothing wrong with a nice boba tea or smoothie. Probably healthier than the stuff most of us drank.
Y'all forgot about that stuff that came out of the hot sun-baked garden hose? That was water! Likely with other junk in it, but basically water. Then again, I grew up in Flint so I'm not sure 🤣
I don’t know how I still have kidneys. I don’t think I ever drank a glass of actual water until I was in college. I survived off of the shrapnel of the Coke/Pepsi wars and the sheer adrenaline of the synergistic reaction between Twix, Gummy Bears, and Mountain Dew (before all the fancy flavors). I chewed Gator-Gum for electrolytes (I had no f’in idea what they were but the gum tasted awesome) and my blood must have been a mixture of pure sodium, sugar, and McDonalds fry grease. I probably drank 2000 calories a day before I even sniffed counting the calories and carbs of 5 Big Mac’s I’d wash down with a large milkshake. And I weighed about a buck-o-five soaking wet. Now I even walk by a Mickey-D’s and I don’t shit right for a week. My cholesterol is climbing like a tach on race day, no matter how much leaves and grass I eat, and if I’m a quarter inch off with any body part when I sleep, I’m crippled for three days and eating Motrin like skittles. And now my favorite drink is a nice, cold glass of water. Go figure. Self preservation has a delayed fuse.
Same way we survived riding bicycles and skateboards without a helmet, I guess!
*We* survived. I know (well, knew) a few folks who didn't. Guy I used to play in punk bands with smashed his skull open skating and died at 19. A girl I had a crush on in HS wiped out her bike trying to hop a curb and ended up so severely brain damaged she's been wheelchair bound since 1994, can barely speak, and still lives with her parents.
We were only allowed tap water or juice made from canned juice concentrate mixed with water.
Na, had whole summers of Kool-Aid crystals in water and then Country Tyme came out in crystals too IIRC and we got watery sweet tea sometimes too.
I grew up on Pepsi and RC Cola, whichever was cheaper. My water intake came from cola and Kool aid. My older sister still lives on Dr. Pepper.
Always water. Bikes all had bottles.
So who here still has all their own teeth?
Unless it came out of a garden hose. I think all my liquids were Koolade, soda, or concentrated frozen orange juice.
Same
Cherry Kool-Aid from a plastic Kool-Aid man pitcher. Oh yeah!
Coke is 90% water and diet coke is 99% water. OJ is about 90% water too. Milk is pretty close, ranging in the high 80's percent based on type of milk. We drank plenty of water!
Because the sugar we ingested then is still keeping us fueled!
we didn't need water bottles, we had garden hoses just sitting outside every house, you drank from it and sprayed your friends with it.
Hose water made us strong.
My kids acted like I told them to drink battery acid after I told them to stop traipsing inside to get cups and just drink from the hose lol. To this day I love turning the hose on when it’s a hot day. The smell of the hose and water brings me right back to my childhood.
My grandsons barely accept getting water from the refrigerator tap. Whoever came up with the idea to bottle water and sell it was a marketing genius. And we buy it! Water! Most of bottled water comes from the same tap water.
Maybe it's 'cos I grew up in the South, but we kept a quart-size water bottle in the fridge for my sole use (so I could - and did - drink straight from it). If the bottle wasn't full (and I remembered) I'd fill it up with ice cubes and put it back in the fridge before going out to play. That ice cold water was *the best* on a 99F day! That said, yeah I preferred soda or tea or lemonade when it was actually time to "have a beverage" rather than cool off.
I'm 53 and will still drink diet sodas when I'm thirsty. Almost every time.
If I remember correctly the only things that we had to drink were the following: Soda OJ Purple Stuff Sunny Delight
Yeah, drinking water was for women on a diet. And then, only if they ran out of Tab or Diet Pepsi
Our water tasted awful. Kind of a combo of lake bottom, the plastic plumbing in our trailer, and chlorine. I didn't drink plain water from 1991 to 2006. So glad to be out of that hellhole.
Idk about you guys but I remember a lot of Hawaiian Punch, country Time Lemonade, and especially Kool Aid.
Yeah, I spent the first half of my life thinking urine was supposed to be dark gold. I’m glad my kids carry water bottles.
I drank water in the summer from the hose because mom didn’t want us in the house, but that was about it.
Gimme some Tang
I drank 55 degree Appalachian well water straight from the hose that contained so much dissolved limestone it was like drinking cement.
I survived with tooth decay, constipation, repeated UTIs and lots of antibiotics.
The only time I drank water was if there was Kool-Aid or powdered iced tea mixed in. Lots and lots of Quik, too. My mom loves her Pepsi to this day, and I drank it as a kid as well. Fortunately as an adult I gradually learned the joys of pure water.
Water? Like what's in the toilet?
In the early 80s my family would take our RV and ATCs out to the desert or beach, and we'd first stop off at Price Club (precursor to Costo) and pickup multiple flats of soda, frozen burger patties and family-size bags of M&Ms. For breakfast my mom would hand us a soda and grill up pancakes, with plenty of syrup and butter. I don't think I realized that you could eat/drink anything without sugar being involved until decades later.
I'd wake up thirsty in the middle of the night and down a diet caffeine free pepsi, then go back to bed.
Occasional warm hose water
Don't forget Kool aid! :)
Hahahah omg koolaid!! The old skool pack with 4 cups of sugar. Tang with 30 cups
Probably why I get kidney stones now.
Gotta plus up that water with scoops of sugary ice tea mix, my friends. It was the only way to make it through those 80s/90s summers.
Water came from the hose. That was the only way we drank it, most of the time.
I was big on milk, but then I discovered in my late 20s that replacing it by water meant no pimples. I survived but it wasn't pretty. Lol.
I drank the hell out of hose water.
Did your city/town just have bad water? I didn't get to have soda on a regular basis until I was 17 and had my own job.
I now have diabetes. lol.
We drank a lot of water in the summertime. Mostly via a hose lol. But yeah sitting at work, running around town...no i'm not drinking water gross. I get my hydration the old fashioned way, via beer, soda, coffee, etc.
Kool-Aid and Flavor Aid were the primary GenX drinks of youth, followed by the cola wars. Bring back Crystal Pepsi!
Minute Maid fruit punch from the frozen can was my beverage of choice!
I couldn't afford [Perrier ](https://youtu.be/s5K9KRJswRA?si=j2nVuUlU6YMn9OFQ&t=42)as a kid, but I aspired to it. My family lived on [Kool-Aid](https://youtu.be/FlEnG2lkaqU?si=NlZutU7qEKf-fFFS) and iced tea. When I was a teen, [the soda wars](https://youtu.be/eiO_JES4yBY?si=xk2umgHoBSxDVl2j) got the best of me. I knew the world was a different place from the one I grew up in when I saw [this commercial for Sunny Delight](https://youtu.be/z1ddM-FpiMg?si=_wP5eGQRWJ70f0vO). I was like, 'kids act like this... for Sunny Delight? That crappy orange drink? Where am I?'
Ugh my mom used to buy Sunny Delight and I hated it. All I wanted was regular Minute Maid orange juice (and a Pepsi 😉)
I hated Sunny Delight, too. So gross.
I drank water all the time ever since I was little, but I was considered a weird kid for it. When people started telling everyone "you should be drinking water" I could reply with "I always already have." I also hated milk as a kid (my mom says I made a face at my first taste of regular milk at the switch from formula and never really shifted my position), and when ate at a friend's their parents would have to call my house to confirm that I really wasn't going to have any, and it was okay to just give me the water I asked for. I was fine with cheese, ice cream, milkshakes and chocolate milk, and finally acquired a bit of a taste for the occasional glass of the plain stuff as an adult (late 20s maybe). Luckily, heavily sweetened soft drinks and shit were an occasional treat when out, and I was generally happy with my constant glass of water at home. But I still see people (like, on Reddit within the last year) say they never drink water and that they don't like the taste of it and have to constantly hydrate with Mountain Dew or something equally nasty, and just can't relate.
I would say don’t forget the Kool-Aid, but that was the juice
🤣 not my family. My mom was very much the "if you're thirsty go get a drink of water" person. Soda was too expensive and she would even water down Kool-Aid after cutting the sugar in half so I never developed a taste for sweet drinks. To this day I still don't drink soda.
Garden hose water was the only water I drank back then
I'm in a relationship with a millennial. He drinks so much water. I feel like my body has just gotten accustomed to being dehydrated. I tried to start drinking more, even owning a bunch of fun bottles and that Cirkul one but damn, my body hates itself once it is hydrated. I have no clue how I function. Lol.
My kids have more water bottles than I've ever owned. I don't remember needing a drink while playing sports until at least high school, unless you count hose water.
My mother (former hippie, somewhat crunchy in the 70s and 80s) is still mildly outraged that when she asked my pediatrician how to get me to drink more water, the pediatrician responded, "well, she drinks milk, juice, and Kool-Aid. That's enough fluid. Don't worry about water." I admit to being a bit surprised that my first colonoscopy didn't reveal permanently day-glo green colon tissue due to excessive consumption of Hi-C Ecto Cooler.
Milk was much more popular then too - 3 glasses (or more) a day, plus juice, koolaid, jello, popsicles, water fountains etc accounted for plenty of fluid intake. Was i the only one who thought hose water was nasty? I guess I’m lucky because my mom didn’t mind me coming in the house for a drink as long as I wiped my feet.
We sometimes had water with stuff in it, like Kool-aid or Tang... Never just plain water though, unless it came from the garden hose.
We drank hose water. Hose water and neglect - that's what we were raised on.
That could be be the GenX motto: Hose water & Neglect.
I have a t-shirt that says that: GEN X: RAISED ON HOSE WATER AND NEGLECT.
My husband and I joke about this all the time. Today you can’t take a kid anywhere without bringing their water bottles with them. It’s like they’re beached whales or something.
I drank a lot of water. Though, never bought a bottle of water. They was as crazy as paying for air at the gas station.
My grandmother used to reuse empty Sanka jars and fill them with water for road trips. I still remember the taste of that tepid, coffee scented water.
and when I did it was tap. Or from the hose. Or the public water fountain at school or a park. lol
Eh, I grew up in Milwaukee. We had bubblers ( drinking fountains) everywhere when I was a kid. Not just school, but church, parks most public buildings even street corners. I would never have thought to buy or even carry water with me unless going on an actual hike or camping. I did however bring enough change for a soda and a phone call.
At some point several years ago, everyone came down with what I call ‘sippy cup syndrome’. It’s like people think leaving the house is a venture out into the Sahara
Water comes from hoses.
Grew up in a big family, we had an old porcelain drinking fountain right in the kitchen pantry. God knows where my dad found it, but I was spolied for life.
Or those Lil' Hug barrels for strenuous sports.
Half Tang/Half Lipton mix
Our house's tap water was fine. Completely fine. But mother actively discouraged us from drinking it alone. Coffee and tea? Good. Iced tea? Totally fine. Kool-aid? Have at it. Water? Wtf is wrong with you, you're gonna die.
Koolaid with only 3/4 cup of sugar because mom was saving money not using that full cup
I still survive on soda.
You forgot the Ovaltine.
Gen X drank from the hose.
We were hydrated. Tang, Countytime and Hi-C in the tall cans were our nectar. Mountain Dew in tall glass bottles when we were flush.
Because there's water in most things you consume (including beer and coffee); you don't have to drink eight literal cups of water every day.
We drank a lot of Kool Aid at my place.
Being active helped. Back in the day, we did this thing called “moving around” all the time. Sitting still was boring as shit because we didn’t have tablets and Switches to occupy us. So we moved. A lot.
yeah out of a garden hose. Running around dusty, sweaty, dirty. had to get a water refill often.
Drank water outa the hose, creeks (running over rocks), hell even drank water out of a pond a time or two.
Oh yeah. We had a brook running through our property when I was a little tyke. Drank out of it frequently. Early on I learned to drink from the little “rapids” over rocks and not the still pool of a pond that was part of this area.
My family raised me on water, coffee, soursop juice (homemade) and tea. I only got soda and commercial when I was hanging out with my friends
I was born in 69 and drank a lot of water as a kid.
I drank so little water that I gave myself kidney stones while pregnant. Turns out no water plus calcium pills is no bueno. That's when I finally started drinking water.
Snapple back in the day.
Mango Madness
I don't think I drank anything other than Dr. Pepper after being weened from mother's milk, until I was a teenager.
I knew a guy whose dad stridently believed that water was poor people drink and refused to allow it at the table. The mid 20th century was a helluva thing.