How Do You Know It’s Time to Break Up?

With your Nalgene bottle? It’s hard to say. I mean, yes, it’s giving you cancer. But…maybe it’s not really giving you cancer. And, just exactly how poisonous IS “poisonous?” Plus it’s a poisonous world we live in, anyway. If I have to live in a poisonous world, I might as well live it with something I love, even if there are major damaging effects, right? Seriously. It’s hard to surrender something once you have a history with it. You remember the early days, after you first bought it. You couldn’t help but glow every time you looked at, drank from it, felt its cumbersome presence in your purse.
And by time the initial bliss wore off, well, it was a part of your life! Not just a part of your life…a part of you! When it wasn’t in your hand, or tasting a bit moldy when you sipped from it, you felt empty, alone and insignificant. And then it hits you like a pound of bricks: BPA. In your nalgene bottle. Killing you. It’s all so sudden. So out of the blue. So shocking you can’t even think about it. So you don’t. You go on using it. All the while repressing a very uncomfortable, distasteful, self-reproachful feeling.

Unfortunately, my state of denial is not being supported by others. As I headed into the kitchen to fill up the other day, I heard Haley call, “Rachel, you’re still using your nalgene bottle??!” Caught in the act, I stammered, “Um, well there’s this film on the bottom of it…so I can’t really see if it has a number 7. So, it might not be bad for me.” (She didn’t respond. Go me.)

Then yesterday Anne approached my desk. “You know, Rachel, you can turn your nalgene into a lantern. We’ll find a Web site and show you how.”

And of course, Whole Foods is now selling Siggs in two different places in the store. There’s a whole rack of them next to check out line calling, “Ask someone to save your spot and scoot out to make an impulse purchase!”

Lastly, according to today’s homepage, Sigg is going to be huge. And you know how much I love the homepage…

I’m wondering: Does it count as cheating if you just read about it??