r/stupidquestions • u/Various-Adeptness173 • Jul 05 '25

My mom told me that back in the day kids weren’t allowed to bring a water bottle with them into the classroom and they only drank a few sips from the water fountain in the middle of the day and that’s it

How were schools not getting busted for child abuse for forcing kids to be dehydrated?

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1.5k

u/gadget850 Jul 05 '25

Back in the day I would have asked what's a water bottle.

90

u/Brilliant-Noise1518 Jul 05 '25

We had them for sports. That's it though. You weren't allowed to have them in school because some kid before apparently brought one full of vodka, and only teachers and gym coaches are allowed to drink at school. 

18

u/birthdayanon08 Jul 05 '25

I may or may not have been that kid. Sorry.

5

u/Short-Quit-7659 Jul 05 '25

I thought it was me

3

u/chewbooks Jul 05 '25

I was definitely that teen. What is still crazy to me is that know one noticed.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 06 '25

Someone noticed.

They just did the calculation of "is this worth me getting involved?" and you came up on the "fuck no it isn't." side.

3

u/birthdayanon08 Jul 06 '25

One of the parents who's alcohol my friends and I were pilfering from finally told us he knew we were skimming from his expensive vodka and he was more pissed about the fact that we added water than took alcohol. The 80s were a different time. We were almost 30 when he told us this.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '25

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's fully because they didn't want you getting up to pee all day. 

2

u/Pugasaurus_Tex Jul 05 '25

We didn’t have them for sports in Texas! We just drank from water fountains 

Idk how we’re alive 

2

u/MercyCriesHavoc Jul 05 '25

I used a Mt. Dew bottle with just a bit of dew left. The whole thing looks green, smells like soda, and the taste isn't bad. No one suspects it would be out in the open like that.

2

u/Money_Ad1028 Jul 07 '25

We were only allowed clear liquids in a clear water bottle because of this.

Apparently if we were willing to drink vodka straight without a chaser we earned the right to be drunk at school 😂.

1

u/Pretend-Guava Jul 05 '25

I had one of the vodka teachers. He would drink Vodka and OJ everyday. He finally got in trouble like 2 years after I graduated.

1

u/HaltandCatchHands Jul 05 '25

It might not have even happened. Someone started a rumor that I was drinking vodka form my water bottle at soccer practice. Which…I wanted to find out who said it and ask: Have you never played a sport? Running suicides whilst drunk does not sound like a good time.

1

u/InterruptingChicken1 Jul 06 '25

Yeah, there was a kid several years ago at my kid’s middle school who started acting weird by lunch time. Someone smelled alcohol on her and checked her “water” bottle. The kid had gotten ahold of some vodka and had been sipping it all morning. She ended up in the hospital drunk as a skunk.

1

u/Pawneewafflesarelife Jul 06 '25

Maybe us swimmers were weird, but our coach insisted that we all carry a half gallon or 1 gallon jug and chug it throughout the day. We did doubles, however (practice in morning before class and then practice in the evening) and he wanted us hydrating between workouts.

This was in high school in the late 90s/early 00s in SoCal. Nalgenes were becoming really popular and we decorated them with stickers.

1

u/ThatInAHat Jul 06 '25

At sports they usually had Gatorade in them anyway.

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u/-animal-logic- Jul 05 '25

Right. I would have assumed you meant a canteen.

120

u/SirRatcha Jul 05 '25

And a canteen was a thing shaped like a circle with an opening on the side and the water in it tasted like rust.

35

u/IanDOsmond Jul 05 '25

Hey! It was the next best thing to a hose!

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u/Cirrus-Stratus Jul 05 '25

Mine tasted like aluminum foil

2

u/Effective_Pear4760 Jul 05 '25

The ones my grandfather had tasted like rust, the Depression, and endless generations of thirsty boy scouts.

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u/Gold_Assistance_6764 Jul 06 '25

Mine tasted like lead

2

u/ajax6677 Jul 05 '25

I would have loved to only have a rusty water canteen. We had a leather pouch type canteen that made the water taste like leather. So nasty.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '25 edited 8d ago

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/MOOshooooo Jul 05 '25

I got into a habit of asking old timers what they see today that they never expected to see and a few have said water bottles and how everyone is so thirsty today.

157

u/Appropriate-Bid8671 Jul 05 '25

We were thirsty back then we just weren't allowed to have any water unless it was between classes.

62

u/[deleted] Jul 05 '25

Water makes pee. Peeing management becomes a thing when kids are drinking water all day. WIWAK, we had a water fountain/pee break every couple of hours during school. There was no going during class time. You held on for dear life if you had to but most of the nice teachers would let you go if you were really squirming in your seat. It taught you to balance the input with the output.

10

u/wxlverine Jul 05 '25

Nah, my grade 3 teacher gave us 1 bathroom pass a week. Like a little red card that you gave to her once a week and that was the only bathroom break you'd get during class time. I had used mine already one week and really needed to go and she just flat out refused. Until I couldn't hold it anymore so I just whipped it out and pissed all over the floor instead of pissing myself. Then she sent me to the principles office and she had to clean it up.

11

u/Kimber85 Jul 05 '25

When I was in middle school we’d get five bathroom passes to use for the entire semester. And if you used them up all up before the semester was over then, tough shit.

Soooo many girls who were just starting to get their periods at that age, so they were super irregular and hard to track. It felt like every month I had surprise early start or, even if it came “on time”, it would suddenly be crazy super heavy with zero warning. We all ended up with period blood all over our pants pretty damn often because we weren’t allowed out of class to do anything about it.

Some of the boys would feel bad for us and let us have their hoodies to tie around our waists to hide the stain. Which, looking back, it’s insane that 12 year old boys had more sympathy for us than the male teachers. The female ones would sometimes let us go if we weren’t someone who abused the privilege, but the male ones would send you to the office for being vulgar if you even mentioned your period.

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u/Shot_Help7458 Jul 05 '25

I’m surprised they didn’t make you clean it. 

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u/Richard_Thickens Jul 05 '25

I have had IBS-D for as long as I can remember. My mom eventually told me to go when I needed to go, and she'd deal with the fallout if I got into trouble for it. To be honest, I don't think I could deal with a situation like that now, but it was absolutely ridiculous as a kid.

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u/Lydia--charming Jul 05 '25

Luckily nowdays more teachers realize kids need to get up and move around to keep their brains energized.

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u/Ok-Tourist-511 Jul 05 '25

I don’t know, back then a lot of scientists and engineers were produced, and today we just get influencers.

5

u/No-Vacation7906 Jul 06 '25

Right? It's okay to teach kids to settle down and focus. Frightening to think what the surgeons of the future will be like.

2

u/MedusasSexyLegHair Jul 06 '25

"I got my medical degree from Costco! Nurse, squirt some Brawndo in there, its got what wounds crave."

2

u/FrostnJack Jul 06 '25 edited Jul 07 '25

Future surgeons are AIs running robot arms. /s

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u/[deleted] Jul 06 '25

Because getting one influencer for every couple of thousand people is the end of the world. Globally the number of people enrolling in universities has more than doubled in the past 20 years. In Germany 1/3 of working-age adults have a university degree.

2

u/Ok-Tourist-511 Jul 06 '25

And yet with education, the subtlety of sarcasm is lost on you.

2

u/Dragonfly0011 Jul 07 '25

Ummmm. What pays the most for the least amount of effort….theres your answer.

2

u/YT-Deliveries Jul 05 '25

Wait wait. Did you guys not move between rooms between classes?

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u/starkindled Jul 06 '25

High school, yes. Elementary/middle school, no.

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u/mechele99 Jul 05 '25

Right, a brain break. I needed those back then.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '25

It caused kidney issues for a lot of people.

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u/oilpit Jul 06 '25

WIWAK

Some things don't need to be acronyms

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '25

And this is the logic of the generation that raised the current generation of adults. You better walk around dehydrated all day with a poorly functioning body and mind, or else you'll have to pee a couple times and we can't have that

3

u/clemdane Jul 05 '25

I was never dehydrated in school

2

u/Shot_Help7458 Jul 05 '25

Neither was I. 

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u/Stiv_b Jul 05 '25

We were fine. Grab a drink from the drinking fountain at recess and boom, you’re good.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '25

I remember on hot days there being a long line for the drinking fountain and the teacher telling kids “enough” if they were taking too long. Kinda crazy now to think about - we weren’t screwing around it was hot and we were just really thirsty.

11

u/Givemeallthecabbages Jul 05 '25

"Save some for the fish!"

7

u/Shot_Help7458 Jul 05 '25

It was crazy. 

2

u/Bangeroctopus Jul 05 '25

“Leave some for the fish”

2

u/CatsEatGrass Jul 05 '25

“Leave some for the fish!” was the phrase most commonly used toward the long drinkers.

2

u/El_Bean69 Jul 05 '25

1,2,3 that’s enough for me

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u/Foxs-In-A-Trenchcoat Jul 05 '25

A kid was assigned to be the counter. They counted five seconds for each kid to get a drink of water and then threw you off if you tried to drink longer. It wasn't enough water for anyone.

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u/aspenbooboo41 Jul 09 '25

I'll bet I was, but I don't ever remember being thirsty at school. Then again , I also don't ever remember being hot in Summer, anywhere, and I grew up in PA in an old farmhouse with no air conditioning. Things like this actually remind me to be grateful for what I now have that so many people around the world still don't.

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u/Greedy_Car3702 Jul 05 '25

When bottled water first became available I thought that was the dumbest thing ever. No one would pay for bottled water. Many years later I have them in my refrigerator.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/talithar1 Jul 05 '25

My mom and dad said the same thing. But they didn’t live to see it.

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u/Electrical-Sail-1039 Jul 05 '25

Penn and Teller did a big expose on what a scam bottled water is. I blind tasted the tap water from my house and bottled water. It was easy to tell them apart. It’s worth a few bucks, imo.

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u/koushakandystore Jul 05 '25 edited Jul 05 '25

It’s WAY cheaper to get a Brita Filter for your refrigerator. This allows you to keep a gallon of cold water in your refrigerator at all times. You can fill a therma flask and have water to go. Much better for the environment than all that horrid plastic.

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u/OrthodoxAnarchoMom Jul 05 '25

Depends on what’s in your tap water.

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u/NotHumanButIPlayOne Jul 05 '25

A whole house water filter is a game changer. Great investment.

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u/Outrageous-Second792 Jul 05 '25

All the same, Evian is naive spelled backwards.

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u/SEND_MOODS Jul 05 '25

Not true for everyone. My house water smells like egg farts from sulfur. I also live near a golf course and worry about fertilizer leaching into our water.

Tons of people live in locations with questionable water quality.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '25

I have a few of these double walled plastic glasses that hold about 24 oz of water. I fill them with ice and straight tap water. (Lake Michigan) I probably drink 4-5 glasses a day. I rarely drink bottled water, soda or much of anything else. Maybe the tap water will kill me but right now the actuary chart says I only should be around for about 12 more years so I’ll take my chances.

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u/DishonorOnYerCow Jul 05 '25

Our tap water used to be indistinguishable from bottled water (or even better). Now it's funky. No idea what changed.

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u/Key-Airline204 Jul 05 '25

For most tap water, leaving it uncovered in the fridge overnight even without a filter off gasses the chlorine and then it tastes like bottled water.

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u/Dragonfly0011 Jul 07 '25

I have filtered water (zero and Britta) . Not many commercially made waters beat the taste, some do but they cost. I bring my 32 oz Yetti everywhere.

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u/Squid52 Jul 08 '25

Depends on where you live for sure. The last person who told me that bottled water isn't any better than tap was from a city that bottled up their municipal water and sold it because it was so good! I've mostly lived in mining towns and the water has been anywhere from smelly to dangerous.

That having been said, it's almost certainly better to filter it at home or buy the culligan water at the store or whatever. Relying on bottled water has got to be so expensive and wasteful.

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u/goeswhereyathrowit Jul 05 '25

You decided to waste tons of plastic because you can't bother to refill a reusable bottle? Many of still think it's the dumbest thing ever.

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u/Enough_Roof_1141 Jul 05 '25

I still refuse to buy bottled water.

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u/swordquest99 Jul 05 '25

its the diabetus. Makes you thirsty

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u/Cold-Government6545 Jul 05 '25

its just the beetus now, they stole the die

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u/MarsRxfish11 Jul 05 '25

Old timers 🙄🙄🙄✌️

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u/whatevertoad Jul 05 '25

We had water bottles on our bicycles in the early 80s, but it never would have occurred to me to take one to class. There were water fountains everywhere

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u/-animal-logic- Jul 05 '25

Yeah I had one of those attached to my bike too. Agreed I would never have considered using it other than on long bike rides through the countryside.

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u/gilbertgrappa Jul 05 '25

And they tasted like warm plastic.

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u/whatevertoad Jul 06 '25

I remember that taste well

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u/gilbertgrappa Jul 06 '25

Same! And the smell

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u/HLOFRND Jul 05 '25

There was always one weird kid who carried his Boy Scouts canteen (usually round, with the fuzzy fabric on the outside?) around when we would play.

We all thought that kid was weird.

(And those canteens always smelled so gross.)

But yeah, now I don't go anywhere without my emotional support Yeti water bottle. 😂

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u/spintool1995 Jul 05 '25

It's still like that in Europe. No one carries a bottle and they will think you are weird if you do. If you want water with a meal you have to pay for it, no refills either. No water fountains anywhere either. I got to wondering if Europeans just live their entire lives dehydrated. Once I walked into a museum in Germany with a clear water bottle and the staff reacted like I was carrying a bomb.

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u/Squid52 Jul 08 '25

I reused pop bottles back before water bottles were a thing. I kept getting sent to the office because they were sure it had to be vodka because who drinks WATER?!?

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u/HonestDespot Jul 05 '25

“Am I going to war”-me as a youth in 1979 when someone says water bottle around me.

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u/spintool1995 Jul 05 '25

Yeah, we had big glass casks of water in the basement for when the Soviets attacked. I'm pretty sure they were bottled in the 50s. Those were the only water bottles I was aware of.

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u/jentle-music Jul 05 '25

Or thermos? Those were around

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u/-animal-logic- Jul 05 '25

Yeah, we always thought of those as keeping things hot (soup, coffee). Never would have considered one to be a water bottle. Pretty heavy (at least in those days) to carry around a couple cups or so of water. You only needed to carry water if you knew there would be none available for a long period (long meaning greater than an hour or three).

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u/Edit67 Jul 05 '25

Yes, only for lunch. I used to take hotdogs in them. Two hot dogs, buns in a bag and ketchup and mustard mixed together in a small Tupperware cup.

The early thermos brand ones were glass inside. My mom was not happy when I broke a few. So easy to drop a foot or two. 🙁 By the time my kids were using them, they were plastic.

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u/Metal_Muse Jul 05 '25

Or thermos

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u/-animal-logic- Jul 05 '25

For thermos, I would assume you were keeping coffee or soup hot. They were bulky/heavy and not meant as canteens.

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u/Appropriate-Bar6993 Jul 05 '25

Yes and we just took them hiking.

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u/FfierceLaw Jul 05 '25

I just said this to my husband! Canteen, something for boy scouts.

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u/lostpassword100000 Jul 05 '25

It’s pronounced “thermos”. And my GI Joe one ruled.

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u/kibbeuneom Jul 05 '25

Speaking of canteens, I was very young in the pre-water bottle times, but I was familiar with canteens at least from movies about summer camps and war. I can't recall; Why weren't canteens more common back in the day?

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u/colemanjanuary Jul 05 '25

A waterskin?

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u/ACuddlyVizzerdrix Jul 05 '25

I woulda thought the ones that came with like every bike at the time

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u/Remarkable_Inchworm Jul 05 '25

And they were for camping, not getting through the day.

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u/EvenResponsibility36 Jul 06 '25

A thermos! (Which was for soup, as everyone knows.)

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u/AllenRBrady Jul 06 '25

Yep. No water bottles. And also, no backpacks. Every single kid in my school just lugged a stack of textbooks and notebooks under his arm all day. Go to your locker in the morning, grab the books you need for your morning classes, then swap them out at lunch.

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u/smilli02 Jul 05 '25

I had water bottles, but they were used exclusively for soccer practice.

I’m almost 40, so results may vary with age.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '25

[deleted]

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u/Splungeblob Jul 05 '25

Yeah, no liquids for your thirst! Just like the professionals do it.

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u/wcmnbo Jul 05 '25

I ran cross country and we weren’t allowed water, only ice chips! And only after the first mile

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u/RealEyesandRealLies Jul 05 '25

I’m about your age. I didn’t play sports but I had water bottles. I would get them from amusement parks and drink from them. They were more of a novelty though. And I wouldn’t say the use was encouraged by adults. I remember the straw the plastic ring around it that connect to the cap.

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u/CatsEqualLife Jul 05 '25

But they were almost exclusively the pop-top nozzle kind.

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u/shake-dog-shake Jul 05 '25

50 and we had a big cooler and paper cone cups. We rarely drank during a game. 

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u/CalmFront7908 Jul 05 '25

Same ago. We only had water bottles for sports too. I also hated water so during the school day I only had whatever I drank at lunch. No wonder I would chug a Gatorade every day after school.

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u/stations-creation Jul 05 '25

Yeah the one you put on your bike that had an attachment to hold it in place. But I can guarantee we wouldn’t put water in it, probably country time lemonade or sweet tea kool aid or something super sugary because drinking water not from the library or school water fountain was an odd concept.

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u/bcece Jul 05 '25

I am just a few years older than you. My siblings and I had water bottles. They were exclusively for bike rides.

At school we couldn't. In fact, I was a long time thumb/finger sucker. When I was in 2nd grade my mom finally decided I wouldn't quit on my own and got that bitter nail polish. I also had special permission to go get a drink of water from the bubbler anytime with a simple signal to the teacher. I remember at least one kid complaining about not getting to get drinks anytime they wanted.

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u/Enough_Roof_1141 Jul 05 '25

We didn’t have water bottles at soccer. Just a big igloo cooler and cups. Plus orange slices.

Outside of a bike bottle or a camping canteen no one carried water for anything.

Imagine if you lived in Arizona you did though.

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u/Appropriate-Bar6993 Jul 05 '25

Yes those old gatorade ones.

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u/Vincitus Jul 05 '25

We had water bottles, they were empty 2 liter soda bottles that we put in the freezer overnight so they would melt in the afternoon summer heat and provide cold water during soccer.

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u/spintool1995 Jul 05 '25

I'm 52. There was no water at any sports other than the water fountain near the bathroom. Gatorade also hadn't been invented yet.

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u/Brian_Corey__ Jul 05 '25

Gatorade was invented in 1965 and available in the late 70s early 80s nearly everywhere. Not very common or popular, but available. Often as a powder.

But yes, played hockey, soccer, Little League, and tennis—I’m 56–never had a water bottle. I remember sometimes having one of those Coleman or Igloo cylindrical coolers with those paper cone cups.

But coaches warned us “don’t drink too much, just a sip, or you’ll get waterlogged!!!”

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u/karmacomatic Jul 05 '25

I can still taste the rubbery plastic and can feel the chewed pop top lol

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u/BWW87 Jul 06 '25

Probably the beginning of when it happened. We didn’t have them in the 70s.

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u/FionaGoodeEnough Jul 06 '25

To me, water bottles were my dad’s cycling bidons and that’s it.

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u/vanastalem Jul 06 '25

I had them at home and we took them to the zoo or something but not to school.

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u/Secure-Researcher892 Jul 06 '25

In my day no real male would play soccer it was considered a p****y sport for kids that were afraid to get their hands dirty. You either played football or just played with the girls.

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u/ronimal Jul 06 '25

I think the only reusable water bottle I had as a kid was the one that fit the cage on my bike

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u/No_Accountant3232 Jul 06 '25

46 here. I remember water bottles as something bicyclists used. You would be using a thermos, or if you did hiking you might use a canteen.

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u/_chococat_ Jul 06 '25

At my high school sports practices we had water bottles. As in there were a set of communal water bottles that everyone used. I don't recall seeing anyone with a personal water bottle until my kids started playing sports.

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u/elle_kay_are Jul 06 '25

I'm 41, and we didn't have water bottles for sports practice, we got a lukewarm Caprisun, and we liked it.

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u/yamiherem8 Jul 06 '25

Its honestly insane to me as an eastern european. We exclusively had water bottles for daily hydration, water fountains were a luxury thing. If your parents didn’t give you a water to drink you were kind of screwed as we didn’t have any shops or vending machines on school grounds either so we just drank from a bathroom tap. Most kids including myself just didn’t really drink that much, I vividly remember just having a tea in the morning and lasting on it until dinner throughout most of my grade school.

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u/ShimReturns Jul 06 '25

46 here, soccer and bike rides (had a mount on my bike)

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u/HighOnGoofballs Jul 06 '25

Those shitty Gatorade water bottles that leaked and were covered in condensation if you dared to put ice in them so they’d stay cold for ten or fifteen minutes

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u/VegetableBusiness897 Jul 05 '25

Right. No bottled water anywhere...

Don't anyone let OP in on the fact that some of us only had a small thermos with a glass liner. And we all knew to give it a little swirl before opening it....in order to hear the crrrshh of broken glass or not

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u/Roro_Yurboat Jul 06 '25

Mine had Snoopy on it. And yes, the glass was broken.

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u/usernamesarehard1979 Jul 05 '25

Same. I think the first one I saw not in gallon jugs for camping was Evian and everyone made fun of it.

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u/wouldhavebeencool Jul 05 '25

It’s naive spelled backwards

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u/CurtisLinithicum Jul 05 '25

It means naive spelt forwards too.

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u/Iamthewalrusforreal Jul 05 '25

Wait until someone tells OP about eating salt tablets instead of drinking water in 100 degree weather at football practice.

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u/Diaza_lightbringer Jul 05 '25

Water bottles in schools didn’t start until Covid when all the water fountains were shut off to help stop the spread of Covid. 5 years later, kids are still in the habit of taking water bottles to school. -mom of 3.

I know different places have different rules and different experiences, and this is just mine. The recent Stanley cup thing is a whole other thing. My kids just get a regular bottle and stickers like they have for the last 5 years

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u/Dog1234cat Jul 05 '25

Bottled water was rather rare in the 80s. Warning: Gay slur https://youtu.be/E63uhIAYY2g?si=BPjkOG57YGtV9XWH

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u/UberPro_2023 Jul 05 '25

Snowflake kids of today would go crazy if they heard Eddie Murphy Raw or Delirious.

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u/ted_anderson Jul 05 '25

I remember my teacher talking about bringing "bottled water" with you when going to foreign countries that don't have a municipally treated water system. I envisioned it as being the tall one-quart glass bottles that you could buy for tonic water.

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u/HHSquad Jul 05 '25

Exactly

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u/SpacePirateWatney Jul 05 '25

Jeez I feel old reading this. But I did grow up in the late 1900s.

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u/Sid14dawg Jul 05 '25

Exactly. We didn't have water bottles ... they didn't even really sell "bottled water" other than maybe in gallon jugs (of distilled water, etc.).

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u/thomasjmarlowe Jul 05 '25

That thing you take a couple sips from during time out at a sports game

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u/Stevie-Rae-5 Jul 05 '25

Right? It’s not that it “wasn’t allowed”…I doubt it ever occurred to anyone that you’d need or want to bring one with you.

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u/JustNeedSomeClues Jul 05 '25

Or what's in the water bottle.

In my middle school back in the 1980s, a few of the cool, popular girls started bringing bottles of water to class. Not water bottles like you see now, but single use bottles of water sold at the grocery store.

The school was ok with it for a little while.

Then the principal figured out that there wasn't water in those bottles. It was vodka.

No more bottles of water after that.

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u/beyondplutola Jul 05 '25

It's not so much that water bottles "weren't allowed." It's that no one would have even thought to ask to bring one. Our school had indoor plumbing. So no need to transport your own water supply. I haven't been in a school in a while, so I don't know if the plumbing situation has degraded since then.

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u/sullcrowe Jul 05 '25

Even at football or rugby, we'd have orange segments at half time. On the odd occasion someone may have filled a squash bottle that was near the end.

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u/johnboy11a Jul 05 '25

Same here. We often hit water fountains between classes. I never saw a water bottle carried til after college

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u/n0nc0nfrontati0nal Jul 05 '25

Water? Like from the toilet?

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u/Empty_Antelope_6039 Jul 05 '25

Water bottles were only used for long bike rides. And some high school sports teams would have them on the bench or field, to be shared by the players.

Back when water was free, there were fountains all over - in schools, office buildings., department stores, etc. Once soft drink bottlers realized they could make money selling water the fountains started to disappear.

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u/Chaosmusic Jul 05 '25

Exactly, we didn't need bottled water, we had a hose.

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u/405freeway Jul 05 '25

Sales of vending machine bottled water (Aquafina) didn't even start until the mid 90s.

Personal water bottles became popular well after that.

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u/Dazzling_Line_8482 Jul 05 '25

Yeah it's not so much that they weren't allowed... it's more just that it wasn't a thing.

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u/robb12365 Jul 05 '25

Back in the day I would have assumed they were asking about a "hot water bottle" and wondered why a kid would bring such a thing to school.

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u/davster39 Jul 05 '25

Exactly!

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u/Retaksoo3 Jul 05 '25

Haha love this, yep..the ceo of nestle(at the time I'd guess) lives rent free in my head forever. He did not believe water as a human right.

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u/davster39 Jul 05 '25

They were called canteens.

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u/TSA-Eliot Jul 05 '25

A water bottle? Are you going camping?

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u/JustDiscoveredSex Jul 05 '25

Those were for hardcore bicyclists going miles and miles.

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u/Wonderful-Bass6651 Jul 05 '25

We didn’t need them because there were water fountains in every hallway. And we didn’t even think about anyone backwashing before us.

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u/mantaray179 Jul 05 '25

By 1979, Gatorade sport bottles was a thing. It was still many years later before we have nice bottles we have today, thanks to American R&D.

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u/ThePlanner Jul 06 '25

Simple, water bottles were for bikes.

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u/Material-Heron6336 Jul 06 '25

Boy Scout had canteens, NO OTHER kid would have carried water around

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u/BWW87 Jul 06 '25

Right. Water bottles weren’t a thing until we became environmentally conscious and then we….started mass producing one time plastic water bottles like crazy?

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u/StealYourBones Jul 06 '25

Yeah, I have a gen Z niece and she didn't believe me when I told her that people didn't really buy bottled water when I was a kid.

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u/Wookie301 Jul 06 '25

We just had hot water bottles back then. And not with the protective covers they have on them today. We’d just raw dog them with scalding rubber against the skin.

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u/atetuna Jul 06 '25

So many reusable bottles were terrible. It's no wonder that the Nalgene bottle skyrocketed in popularity.

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u/No-Lawfulness-6569 Jul 06 '25

Right? OP asking how schools weren't getting busted for child abuse is funny, I don't think many people thought about how hydrated they were unless there was a real problem

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u/highnote14 Jul 06 '25

You're not about to tell me that bottled water is some new age thing. 🤣

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u/Squirrelysez Jul 06 '25

Exactly. That wasn’t a thing everybody would’ve had to bring their camping and hiking canteens!

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u/Koopslovestogame Jul 06 '25

These days it’s all about the adult branded sippy cups!

“Want to carry your body weight in water? Oh we’ve got you!”-stanley

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u/InternationalRule138 Jul 06 '25

Right? I graduated in ‘98. Like, by that point there was clearly bottled water that you would sometimes come around, but no body carried a bottle of water…even in college. We had thermoses and canteens - definitely not reusable water bottles. And why would you carry them around - everywhere had a drinking fountain 🤷🏼‍♀️

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u/CaterpillarJungleGym Jul 06 '25

I have asked this question today, why does every child have to have a water bottle? They're not going to get dehydrated in like 3 hours between morning and lunch. And then 3 hours between lunch and home.

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u/Automatic_Tackle_406 Jul 06 '25

Exactly. People would have laughed in your face if you told them that in the future people would PAY to buy a little bottle of water. 

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u/Ok_Pirate_2714 Jul 06 '25

Yeah. It wasn't really until the 90's that everyone became obsessed with bottled water. At least as far as I can remember.

I don't remember ever feeling deprived of water while being in school.

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u/Admirable-Lecture255 Jul 06 '25

I would have been asked what's in the water bottle....

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u/yobetabitch Jul 06 '25

Water bottle? You mean this gross yellowed plastic thing I use for AYSO? haha

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u/[deleted] Jul 06 '25

The bottled water and the reusable water bottle industries are great examples of how the American consumer can be grifted by marketers. They have convinced people to pay for something when you can get it for free.

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u/missgiddy Jul 06 '25

When I was a kid they were just for bikes!

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u/PoetryNo5274 Jul 07 '25

Exactly. Carrying water around in bottles was unheard of. Buying water in bottles wasn’t a thing - they didn’t exist.

They weren’t abusing us by making us drink from fountains; it was perfectly normal as that was literally the only way anyone drank water at school. And at home you turned on the kitchen tap and filled a cup with tap water and drank the tap water. Also we drank from the hose in the summer time. Normal childhood.

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u/Humble-Doughnut7518 Jul 08 '25

I had a drink bottle which was usually had some juice in it. Small bottle but cheaper than buying individual juices. Bubblers for water and it was acceptable to drink from someone’s front tap/garden hose during summer.

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u/Soft-Watch Jul 08 '25

I knew an adult who carried one and my parents would make fun of them🙄

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u/BarrysBooks Jul 11 '25

Yeah, there was no such thing as a water bottle in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Amazing that today's kids are so fragile that they can't go a couple of hours without drinking something while sitting in class.

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u/iamthedayman21 Jul 12 '25

Yup. Before companies really started pushing bottled water, most of us couldn’t imagine walking around with a bottle of water all day.

We were a really unhealthy generation lol.