The half-empty water bottle

I stopped off at the Gentle Strength Cooperative Store on my way home from work today to fill up the water bottles, but because I only had two quarters I had to go inside to the change machine first. Some water machines will give you change themselves, but this one won’t. It just does water, and sends all the change business to the other machine inside the store. I was happy enough to go inside anyway, cause it was 114 outside and the sun shines right on the water machine that time of day.

I’ve never had any trouble getting change there before, but this time I kept feeding one-dollar bills into that persnickety machine, and it kept spitting them back out. I don’t know, I guess maybe they were counterfeit or something. Finally I managed to find a couple that it was willing to accept, and I already had two quarters, so it came out just right for filling up the two 5-gallon bottles I had. You can work it out for yourself, or just take my word for it.

But then when I took the quarters it gave me and tried to put them in the water machine, it would only take six of those and spit the other two out. Seems to me it was pretty unprofessional of that change machine to be so pissy about the counterfeit dollars, and then turn around and give me a bunch of counterfeit quarters I couldn’t use. Especially when I inserted those dollars in good faith, having no prior knowledge that there was anything wrong with them, whereas the change machine had to have known full well it was giving me bum quarters.

And I probably sweated out at least 15 cents worth of water standing there in the heat trying to coax the water machine into taking those counterfeit quarters when it didn’t want to. This machine is already like the snootiest water machine in town, and will only take quarters, not other coins. The one down by Safeway will take all sorts of coins, even nickels, and it has a nice picture of a blue penguin on front.

Not pennies, though. None of them will take pennies. And the real people in the stores don’t much want to take the pennies either, not if you’ve got a lot of them. Why’d the government even bother making pennies, if they’re not good for anything? I bet you that they’re supposed to have to take those pennies, and the government wouldn’t be happy about it if it came out that they’re not doing it. It’s not like I’m the one responsible for the stupid pennies. It's the government that made them, and if anybody’s got a problem with them they should take it up with the government, and just go ahead and give me my groceries. There oughta be a number you could call, and the government’d send somebody out to make them take those pennies.

For all I know there is a number, and I just don’t know what it is. I wonder if there’s a number you can call and find out about the other numbers you don’t know about, that you could call for various things. It’s hard to keep up with all that stuff, especially when it takes this much time out of your day just trying to buy a few gallons of water. I think if there’s not a law about the pennies, the Senate ought to make a law, or at least apologize for not making one, like they did about the lynchings.

And, as luck would have it, the counterfeit quarters were the last two I tried, so I wound up having one bottle with five gallons of water in it, and one bottle with three, rather than two bottles each with four gallons, which would have been preferable. Cause if I’d known ahead of time that I was only going to get eight gallons of water all told, I could have divided it up like that and not had a 5-gallon bottle to lift up on the water dispenser, which is a pretty heavy bottle. Of course, I guess that means I’ll get a break when it comes time to lift the 3-gallon bottle, which won’t weigh as much as it would have otherwise, but who knows when that’ll be? I could get hit by a train before then, and get no benefit at all out of that 3-gallon bottle. All I know for sure is that when I lifted the 5-gallon bottle I threw my back out, and now it hurts whenever I move or don’t move.

I guess I should’ve done the lighter one first and saved the other one, in case I got in the way of the train I wouldn’t have had to lift it at all. The thing is that it’s hard to predict in advance when you’re going to have a bad back day and save the lighter water bottles for then, or if you’re going to get hit by the train, and should do the light one now and save the heavy one for somebody else to have to lift after you’re dead. I never could predict that sort of thing. All I can tell psychically is stuff like when a train is actually a Spirit Guide, nothing really practical like if it’s gonna run you over, or if you’re gonna hurt your back on a water bottle.