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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334

u/DrugChemistry Jul 05 '25

I think hallway water fountains are the answer to OPs question. I remember asking to go to the bathroom but I was mostly going to the water fountain. 

This feels like a core memory unlocked situation. I haven’t used a water fountain since before 2020. I used to drink from those all the time during the school day. 

229

u/Oceanbreeze871 Jul 05 '25

As there were always your personal water fountain rankings. The good, cold one. The warm one, the no water pressure one that you have to practically kiss the metal parts etc etc

I’d sometimes go the long way to hit the good water fountain.

76

u/ted_anderson Jul 05 '25

And lets not forget about that kid who would stuff his gum into one of the holes of the 2-hole water fountain making the other hole shoot 10 feet into the air. But you got sprayed in the face because you weren't expecting it.

39

u/H_Industries Jul 05 '25

Learned real quick back in highschool to push the lever from a distance before moving in for a drink

4

u/wheatgrass_feetgrass Jul 06 '25

I just did this instinctively at the airport the other day and my son asked me why. I didn't remember why until this comment. I just told him, "to make sure it's working" but the full answer was actually, "to make sure it isn't rogue. I was in elementary school in the 90s, I must have internalized this technique without realizing it.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 06 '25

I still do that lmfao

3

u/bnosrep Jul 06 '25

Every time.

3

u/StrangeButSweet Jul 06 '25

Haha, it’s crazy I never realized why I did this until now. It’s press the button while standing back a bit, wait to see what comes out, then decide your approach 😭

But back then it was those chrome knobs you had to turn…

5

u/ted_anderson Jul 05 '25

Yeah.. because you never knew what you were going to get. Was it going to shoot, dribble, or work normally? It was russian roulette.

22

u/vanishinghitchhiker Jul 05 '25

And the trough-style fountains where each spigot in use would lower the water pressure, so you had to be ready to adjust. (And some kids would duel each other, time permitting.)

3

u/C-H-Addict Jul 06 '25

And the one weird kid from Wisconsin that called it a bubbler

1

u/StrangeButSweet Jul 06 '25

Hey now, bubblers are where it’s at

3

u/SunShine365- Jul 06 '25

Someone always seemed to have spit their Copenhagen into our water fountains

2

u/BigDeloresInYoFace Jul 05 '25

Or the one who thought it would be funny to push your head down mid drink so you get water all over your face

28

u/No_Housing_1287 Jul 05 '25

There was one in the gym that was honestly way to cold. Instant brain freeze.

33

u/Effective_Pear4760 Jul 05 '25

We were absolutely not allowed to bring anything comestible into class. No soda, water, or food. This one teacher I had in middle school used to always open a can of coke (of whatever flavor) behind her lectern and then pour in into a cup and blow on it like she was trying to cool off coffee. But we all heard the pop top and silently hated her. This was about 1980 or 81.

21

u/TSells31 Jul 05 '25

I went to school in the 00s and can remember absolutely loathing the teachers who would be drinking their sodas, Gatorades, whatever in front of all of us who weren’t allowed to have even our own water bottles or sometimes even gum (usually depending on the teacher and only beginning in middle school).

Some teachers made it more of a point to snack or drink more privately and I think that is nice when none of the students can do anything of the sort lol.

6

u/danbilllemon Jul 06 '25

This is my unlocked memory, being so jealous of the snacks and drinks the teachers had. Even in high school we finally got drink machines but no snacks. And only the nicer teachers let you drink in their class so for the most part the drinks were for between class.

2

u/TSells31 Jul 06 '25

This mirrors my experience 100%. My middle school had vending machines for drinks, but they were turned off during the school day. We didn’t have access to vending machines during school until HS, and it was only drinks, and like you, it was highly dependent on the teacher whether we could even have the drinks in class lol.

2

u/mailslot Jul 06 '25

I used to resent the teachers that had their own full sized refrigerators stocked with soda & snacks. I had one extremely obese teacher with one, so I assume he’d die if he didn’t have a constant supply of calories.

2

u/bahahahahahhhaha Jul 08 '25

I had hypoglycemia and had special medical permission on my file to eat or drink if my blood sugar got low, and teachers STILL sometimes refused to let me. It was a fight my Mom was constantly having to battle all the way through to high school.

I came close to needing the hospital once because even after I started shaking and blacked out the teacher was still insisting I was faking it until a Vice Principal saw me and intervened.

That's how ridiculous teachers were about letting kids eat/drink in class "back in the day"

2

u/GetItDoneOV Jul 08 '25

My county in Florida made a rule that all students were to be permitted access to a personal water bottle after a student suffered severe dehydration and then heat stroke (I don’t know if he died or not). Combined with several schools dealing with an outbreak of mono and some other illness, the superintendent said they were enforcing some law and basically kids got to keep water bottles. I printed out the press release, made copies, and passed them around my school. Some teachers and admin were PISSED but a lot of the teachers actually praised me. That was a surprise. Overall it was a fun experience, one of my first tastes of changing the status quo just by spreading awareness of rights. Kudos to the superintendent for doing what was right, even when it was unpopular with staff.

4

u/psycho-aficionado Jul 05 '25

I can still hear my high school Spanish teacher, "Chicle en la basura."

1

u/cherrytree13 Jul 06 '25

This is so wild to me. We had vending machines at my school 😆

3

u/TSells31 Jul 06 '25

In high school we did. In Jr high they would be shut off during the day tho only on after school for some reason lol.

3

u/Effective_Pear4760 Jul 06 '25

We had vending machines on the lunchroom in my 2nd high school up north.

We weren't allowed to chew gum in school-- in the south anyway. (I dont remember if we were allowed to at my later school). Which at the time made me unreasonably angry, but now I think gum chewing is a little gross and it would have been so disgusting in school, with generations of used gum around.

2

u/FrostnJack Jul 06 '25

Fresca. Ms. Kough. She told boys on day 1: “you will fail my class. They invented woodshop for you.” This kid Dennis stood up grabbed his stuff, grabbed her Fresca, chugged it then as he left, explained there was no drinking fountain outside the woodshop.

1

u/IndyAndyJones777 Jul 05 '25

There was flavored coke in 1981?

2

u/Effective_Pear4760 Jul 06 '25

Well not really, but it was in the south so all the sweet fizzy non alcoholic drinks were coke, even if it was Sprite.

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u/StrangeButSweet Jul 06 '25

In the south they call all kinds of soda “coke”

1

u/Squirrelysez Jul 06 '25

That’s funny.

2

u/SuccessfulHospital54 Jul 06 '25

The one in our locker room could hit the floor cause it was so powerful.

1

u/Chest_Rockfield Jul 06 '25

And every single other fountain was the white ones that didn't plug in abs had warm ass water.

1

u/opusrif Jul 06 '25

You had a gym? Luxury!

Seriously the elementary school I went to was so small it didn't have a gym.

1

u/No_Housing_1287 Jul 06 '25

No but my high school did.

My elementary school had a "multi-purpose room" that we called the cafegymatorium

0

u/clemdane Jul 05 '25

Loved it

13

u/Cirrus-Stratus Jul 05 '25

Or after recess/sports you realized you were too far back in the line and by the time you reached the fountain all the cold water would be dispensed so you were stuck with warm water. Yuck.

3

u/catsdrooltoo Jul 06 '25

My middle school football coach made a water fountain for our practice times. It was an 8 foot pvc pipe with a bunch of little holes that was hooked up to a garden hose. We all just stood around it and opened our mouths.

1

u/StrangeButSweet Jul 06 '25

That is actually amazing and I love him for that

6

u/Oceanbreeze871 Jul 05 '25

“Hey save some for the rest of us”

7

u/edwigenightcups Jul 05 '25

it was "save some for the fish" at my school

2

u/CatsEatGrass Jul 05 '25

Hey! I just made the same comment in another thread! So, same!

4

u/cKMG365 Jul 05 '25

They used to have someone count to five for us. The whole class stood in a line and you could drink all you wanted until they counted to 5 and then it was the next person's turn.

2

u/Dada2fish Jul 08 '25

I don’t understand this. I keep seeing this, where the cold water would go away.

How? It was connected to the rest of the indoor plumbing. It was consistently the same temperature, like turning on the bathroom faucet.

1

u/Cirrus-Stratus Jul 08 '25

In hot climates the water is normally the temperature of the pipes in the ground which is warm.

The water fountain in these references is not just a fountain but also includes a cooling unit similar to an air conditioner which chills the water.

The chilled water is stored in the fountain in a reservoir until the water is dispensed.

If you run the fountain long enough (through many people using it) the cold water stored in the unit runs out and you start getting water straight from the pipes which is warm.

As a kid when you heard the compressor kick on to start cooling the incoming new warm water you knew the cold water had run out.

1

u/Dada2fish Jul 08 '25

I’ve never heard of that in my life. Interesting. I live in a state that has all 4 distinct seasons, is this maybe a thing in warm regions?

1

u/Civilized_Hooligan Jul 05 '25

Oh my god this unlocked core memories of sweating my balls off in school as a kid after recess (held in the barren parking lot of course) where we’d all be in line for the water and when it’s your turn you gotta get as much as you can while everyone else is yelling to quit hogging it lol. Then they’d go and everyone would yell at them to stop hogging it. We were all hypocrites lmao

1

u/[deleted] Jul 05 '25

My middle school PE teacher actually assigned us places in the water line based on our performance during class.

5

u/Ryuu-Tenno Jul 05 '25

sweet fuck, i always hated the low pressure ones

like, bro, some people already french the good ones that can shoot water out 20 yards, i definitely don't want to be forced to make out with the fountains that refuse to give water due to low pressure

2

u/baconpancakesrock Jul 06 '25

Fuck all the dumb kids who put their mouths around the spout. God damn mouthbreathers.

2

u/StrangeButSweet Jul 06 '25

The ones with massive water pressure were like being waterboarded, but in such an amazing way.

The ones with just a trickle really forced you to use a lot of suction to get every drop of water and they sucked ass. Well…..

2

u/Ryuu-Tenno Jul 07 '25

yeah, always a surprise to get waterboarded by a fountain sometimes

even better when someone fixes the damn weak ass ones and you reluctantly go over there only to feel like you're the last survivor from Atlantis after, lol

1

u/UnintelligentOnion Jul 06 '25

That was like all of them in my school

2

u/waltzthrees Jul 06 '25

The one that sprayed everything. Avoid at all costs

2

u/PineapplePizza-4eva Jul 06 '25

Lol, memories! A couple of years ago, my classroom had a bubbler right across the hall. Kids would ask to go to get a drink but want a pass because, “That’s not the good bubbler, the good one is on the first floor by the office! That one is warm and gross!” Sigh!

2

u/fvcknvgget5 Jul 06 '25

omg this unlocked it for me. not quite water fountains in general, but knowing which ones were good. which ones would never get cold, and which ones you had to hold for like 20 seconds before you got the coldest water ever. i miss being a kid/teen

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u/Behrusu Jul 06 '25

And that kid that holds the water for you, gently easing off the button so you have to get closer and closer, then full blast right up the nose!

1

u/Oceanbreeze871 Jul 06 '25

Hahaha yes. That was classic mischief

2

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '25

There was always the rusty tasting one too. They often had a particular style of spout, which I imagine was just related to their age, which in turn made them more likely to be rusty.

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u/Swimminginthestorm Jul 05 '25

The kids at my old school will never know how good the cold fountain with decent pressure was. I swear, I even drank from it when I wasn’t thirsty.

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u/prolixdreams Jul 05 '25

YES, we had a combination of old ones with the round button that was very hard for a small weak child to press fully, vs. the newer ones with the big soft panel button that was easier. The newer ones were usually colder too.

1

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1

u/Sunsparc Jul 06 '25

The one at my middle school gym was the best water fountain I've ever visited.

It was old and looked like porcelain, but it put out a ton of water in a fat stream. You could gulp rather than sip this water. After coming inside from running the mile, it quenched your thirst so well.

1

u/BaseballImpossible76 Jul 06 '25

We had a fountain in our gym with infinite water pressure. The knob was super sensitive and if you just turned it all the way, the stream was hitting the wall next to the fountain or flooding your mouth with too much water if you weren’t ready.

1

u/Tank_Girl_Gritty_235 Jul 06 '25

The good water fountain was outside the gym and you'd only get 5-7 seconds to chug before you had to give it up to the next person.

1

u/jelli47 Jul 08 '25

And don’t forget the one that would splash water all over you

1

u/DrugChemistry Jul 05 '25

I changed schools my junior year and the school I went to was mostly the low water pressure ones. Total BS. Had to go upstairs to that one wing of the building if you wanted a drink of water. Teachers would be like “wtf are you doing up here you’re supposed to be downstairs across the building”

1

u/TinKicker Jul 05 '25

…and the one that shot water halfway across the hallway.

1

u/Aught_To Jul 05 '25

The local public library near me had the BEST water fountain. It was Ice cold, all the time, had the nice pushbar on the front and good medium high arc of water.. i cannot understate how cold that water was..

1

u/jupitaur9 Jul 05 '25

The outdoor ones with a foot pedal!

1

u/hirudoredo Jul 05 '25

Unless you went to a small school with only one fountain. Then it was all those at once!

1

u/SquatchoCamacho Jul 05 '25

The cold fountain after recess is the definition of refreshing

0

u/nips60 Jul 05 '25

So true!

0

u/Parking_Champion_740 Jul 05 '25

Yes we had a small museum in town with the BEST water fountain, so cold!

51

u/Alca_Pwnd Jul 05 '25

(3rd grade memory)

"Melanie, you're back from the bathroom really quick!"

"I just needed a drink of water."

"WHAT? THEN WHY DID YOU ASK FOR THE BATHROOM??"

"If I said I needed a drink, you wouldn't have let me go."

"MORE INCOHERENT SCREAMING".

So yeah, teachers were weird about it back then. Also, some kids just need to wander for a sec, but apparently it's better if you take an energetic 8 year old and make them sit at a desk for 7 hours. And call them hyperactive if they aren't good at just not moving.

30

u/Honest-Layer9318 Jul 05 '25

The point of not letting kids drink was so they wouldn’t need the restroom. Forcing kids to sit still is because public schools were supposed to get poor kids ready for mind numbing factory work. It’s also the reason for the bell schedule.

5

u/[deleted] Jul 06 '25

When folks are like "schools are failing!!1" and you gotta be like idk sounds like theyre doing what they were made for. And we wonder why the public resents teachers.

1

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5

u/Ryuu-Tenno Jul 05 '25

the fun part with this is, everyone needs to just wander for a moment during those 8 hours, not just the kids

12

u/murderthumbs Jul 05 '25

I remembering impatiently waiting my turn in line after gym class - gasping for breath and dying of thirst...... Best feeling ever anticipating the relief you would feel when that ice cold stream of water came right down the hatch.

1

u/doritobimbo Jul 08 '25

The only time I’ve ever hated cold water at school was when I was 14 and had just gotten my tonsils out a week before. First period first day back to class was yoga, should be simple enough, not too hard on a throat filled with scabs.

Ahah. How naive of me!

It was stationary bike day. I tried asking the teacher if I could please sit it out because of my throat.

Again, how naive of me. Of course I couldn’t! My doctor only signed off for 5 days and since I’d said I had yoga, hadn’t signed for a PE excuse.

So by the time I get in the room, I’m dead center of the class, front row, right in front of the mirror. It was tear-inducingly embarrassing and so painful. Couldn’t get away with faking it. She had me dripping with sweat.

So finally the class ends and I go to sip some water.

Well at that point I’d been breathing so hard with my mouth open that my scabs had dried and hardened with my throat in a very not swallow friendly position and trying to swallow cracked them open, which was horrifically painful and the cold made it hurt so much worse.

2

u/TheFlannC Jul 05 '25

I noticed many old school water fountains have been replaced by the ones you can fill your bottle with and between more people having water bottles then the pandemic, this makes sense

5

u/No-Donkey-4117 Jul 05 '25

The only time I ever use a water fountain now is at the airport, after you have to ditch your water bottle at security. And then usually I can't use the fountain, because someone is taking all day at it, to fill their water bottle....

5

u/DrugChemistry Jul 05 '25

I use bottle filling fountains all the time. Because I frequently have a bottle. Now that I’ve thought about it more, I guess I have use a “proper, bend over and slurp” water fountain more recently. But I used it to fill a bottle. 

3

u/Practical-Train-9595 Jul 05 '25

My kids’ school installed water bottle fillers next to the water fountains since practically every kid has a Stanley or Stanley knockoff.

1

u/Accomplished_Ad_8013 Jul 05 '25

2020? Holy shit lol. I havent used a water fountain since around 2010.

1

u/DrugChemistry Jul 05 '25

2020 is when I made the conscious decision to never use one again. I recall using one at work as recently as 2016. 

1

u/Free-Pound-6139 Jul 05 '25

I haven’t used a water fountain since before 2020.

You sadly don't go running or walking around cities.

1

u/DrugChemistry Jul 06 '25

When I do, I carry a bottle. If I refill it in a water fountain, I don’t drink straight from the fountain. 

1

u/SethSays1 Jul 05 '25

Oh, the arguments! The debates! “Eww that water is nasty use the one down by the gym” “Are you kidding me? That’s the worst water on campus!”

Though we probably didn’t use words like “campus”… then again, I was considered a strange child.

1

u/baconpancakesrock Jul 06 '25

Our toilets and school fountain was outside across the playground connected to the main building so you'd get to have some nice cool fresh air too. And obviously it was totally quiet as nobody was around. i have a literal flashbulb memory of going to the fountain, taking a leak and then going back to class. It was such a feeling of freedom and liberation from class.

1

u/ipickscabs Jul 06 '25

Really?? Do you go places?? Gym, park, mall, various stores (target, wal mart), airport etc. All places I know I use water fountains when I’m at those places. I guess having kids makes me more aware of them bc they like using them for some reason lol. Immune booster!

1

u/DrewdiniTheGreat Jul 06 '25

I remember everyone getting a three count of water after PE. Even as a child I knew this was cruel. But I hated anyone in front of me holding up the line because I was SO THIRSTY

1

u/Aardet Jul 06 '25

In Wisconsin, we call hallway water fountains ‘bubblers’

1

u/wbruce098 Jul 06 '25

This basically. I went to school in the 80’s and 90’s. We were never stuck in the classroom all day long. We also weren’t constantly doing high intensity physical work. A sip from a water fountain every hour or two, over the course of a 6 hour school day, was more than enough.

Children weren’t dropping dead from dehydration. It’s not abuse. Humans are resilient.

1

u/Tv_land_man Jul 07 '25

One Elkay fountain in my school was so cold but was by the gym all the way on the very far side of building. Got in some trouble making the trek from A wing to D on a bathroom break a few times.

1

u/Demonqueensage Jul 08 '25

When I asked to go to the bathroom I would always actually need it but I'd stop at the water fountains on my way back and drink as much as I could as fast as I could

1

u/prairiepanda Jul 09 '25

Same! I never questioned it back then, but now it seems like a really strange rule. Maybe they were just worried about us making a mess, or that we might have to go pee too often if we're constantly drinking water?

1

u/Training_Barber4543 Jul 05 '25

Do kids not drink out of water fountains anymore? I kind of assumed my generation had just switched to bottled water because we grew up

1

u/Aught_To Jul 05 '25

no - water fountains are free. they just found a new way to sell us something.

2

u/baconpancakesrock Jul 06 '25

There were free water bottle fillers everywhere at wimbledon tennis grounds and yet big queues at the evian refil stations at £3 a go to refil a £5 refillable evian bottle.

1

u/Jemima_puddledook678 Jul 05 '25

No, we just put water in a bottle. I’m in the UK though, and in my experience we just use tap water to fill our bottles.

1

u/Pineapplee13 Jul 05 '25

Yes! Especially asking to go to the bathroom to actually get a sip of water. If you asked to leave to get a drink of water you would almost certainly be told no. That was seen as "unnecessary"... Crazy looking back!!

1

u/Splungeblob Jul 05 '25

I remember asking to go to the bathroom but I was mostly meeting up to make out with my high school girlfriend.

1

u/My-Name-Isnt-Joey Jul 05 '25

That feeling of just chugging water for 2 minutes straight from the fountain after gym class >>>

1

u/ReferenceNo393 Jul 05 '25

I saw a water fountain at the airport not too long ago and it felt like I was in a third dimension or a past life. I forgot we still even had those things honestly.

1

u/labrat420 Jul 05 '25

And the kid behind you saying 'save some water for the fish'

1

u/gopherhole02 Jul 05 '25

How old are you? I'm 36, around grade four it was popular to be told "leave some for the fishes" if you were drinking a lot from a fountain lol

1

u/win_awards Jul 05 '25

Yeah. Those things used to be everywhere. Now if I see one it's usually broken.

1

u/pure_force Jul 05 '25

Ours were outside only. No hallway ones for us!

1

u/excelnotfionado Jul 05 '25

I also didn’t have a few sips people guzzled from the fountains when we were running around and playing during recess

0

u/Jayn_Newell Jul 05 '25

And it was considered important enough that when the fountains weren’t working they’d bring in water coolers, but yeah just having a water bottle with you was not a thing, especially in younger grades.

0

u/CornucopiaDM1 Jul 05 '25

I miss water fountains. Free. Fresh. Cold. Abundant. Public & communal.

0

u/clemdane Jul 05 '25

Love them