Kith & Kin
Water is essential to collegiate debate, & not only for the perpetually thirsty such as your humble narrator. Water fountains being in many places few & far between, & in any event stigmatized as uncool by far too many, bottled water is widely distributed. Of course, anyone who has paid the least bit of attention knows that bottled water is a nightmare of inefficiency, burning countless gallons of petrol & Diesel in its production & transport & producing mountains of non-biodegradable bottles as waste, all to produce water no cleaner nor more salubrious than that which flows out of the nearest tap in any advanced Western country. As the host of Nationals in 2011, the University of Vermont—with the largess of the Qatar Foundation—distributed reusable water bottles, offered no pre-bottled water, & pointed out the proliferation of water fountains on the campus. This was not the first time reusable bottles had been distributed, but Vermont's became the gold standard because of a unique feature: a flip-open lip, not just any flip-open lip but one that can be opened & closed one-handed. The cap is the problem with most water bottles; it must be unscrewed with one hand while the other holds the bottle still; even bottles with hinged lids often require the use of two hands, one to secure the bottle & the other to flip open the lid. But with the Vermont bottle one hand remains free while the other flips open the lid, raised the bottle to the lips, lowers the bottle, & flips closed the lid. At long last, the right tool for the job!

I've used this green plastic bottle almost every day of my life for the last two years. I took it with me to Ireland, I've taken it all over these Unites States, & it can almost always be found within reach of my right hand, even when I'm piloting the Lumi. (It is with me unless its cooling in the fridge during dinner, when I drink milk, or breakfast, when I drink orange juice, or when I'm enjoying a beer or a G. & T.) When Where's Teddy? was two & the bottle was new, he called it, quite logically, "Uncle Mike's bottle." One of his favorite activities was to pick up the bottle from a table across the room, carry it to me, open up the lid & hand the bottle to me, wait for me to take a drink, accept the bottle back & close the lid, & walk the bottle back to the table across the room. He would do this over & over again, for ten to fifteen minutes at a go without evincing the least sign of boredom. (My thirstiness or lack of same was quite beside the point.) The point of all this, & the reason why this piece is classified as "Kith & Kin," is that when last I was at Xanadu Where's Teddy? rechristened Uncle Mike's bottle as "Uncle Mike's canteen," because Where's Teddy? no longer used bottles but does have a canteen, a bright yellow canteen perfect for hot summer days spent digging in the sandbox or swinging from the swings. Will the bottle remain Uncle Mike's canteen or will it be renamed again as time passes?