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When I was growing up, my Grandpa and Grandma Maurer always had the coolest, nicest STUFF. They had a big color television complete with CABLE (way back in the day), a super dishwasher, an in-house vacuum system, but most impressive of all was their refrigerator. Side by side fridge/freezer, with, amazingly, ice and water in the door. I cannot tell you how many glasses of water and ice my brother and sister and I drank at my Grandparents’ house each week. Water just tasted BETTER somehow when it came out of that fridge door. I always had it in the back of my mind that I would be financially secure when I had a family of my own and a refrigerator with water and ice in the door. Guess what? I am on the cusp of my forty-fifth birthday and still no water and ice in the fridge. Our refrigerator is the very basic model and though it DOES have an ice maker (which to me is kind of posh), that icemaker is NOT in the door and water has to be acquired inside the fridge at the Britta. The Britta is the 3-gallon purifying system that requires water to be poured through the filter, storing the fresh and pure water inside for the drinkers’ to avail through the tap system. It’s a system that has worked just fine until one evening when I was refilling that dang Britta for the thousandth time it occurred to me that I was the only person in the house who ever refilled the Britta! It should not have been a big deal. Just as that thought niggled its way into my brain, my husband came and filled the largest glass we have with delicious purified water. Did he then go and pour an equal amount into the top? Oh no he did not. He just walked away sucking down that water. Suddenly I was enraged beyond all reason. Why was I the only one to fill the Britta? Was I some kind of human water-purifying plant? What about my thirst? Who was watching out for ME? It was at that moment that I hatched the test. I was NOT going to fill the Britta. I would just wait and see how long it took before that sucker emptied out and someone else decided, Oh, my, the Britta is empty! How can that be? It usually is magically filled each night. I told my friends about the test. “I am going to see how long it takes before someone fills up that Britta.” I announced. “It’s a test.” “Are you going to tell anyone there is a test?” Jeanine wondered. I looked at that girl like she was crazy. “OF COURSE NOT! THEN IT WOULD NOT BE A TEST!” Days passed and I watched as the water level went down, down, down in the Britta. To aid the demise of the water, I had a newfound thirst and consumed record amounts of water. I imagined the day that my husband would go with his giant glass to be filled with water, and one pathetic drop would drip into his glass. “AHA!” I imagined myself screaming, “YOU FAIL THE TEST!” I was like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. Over and over I imagined my outrage that no one beside myself would ever fill the Britta. Until, when the time for the K-bomb to blow was precariously close, I came inside to see…MY HUSBAND FILLING THE BRITTA! I don’t think I had ever loved the man more. He was filling the Britta, and more importantly, he was doing it with a cheerful heart. There was not a trace of bitterness or anger on his face as he filled that baby up, and then, as icing on the cake of test passing, he offered me a glass of water. Not since my childhood days at my Grandpa and Grandma Maurer’s had water ever tasted so sweet and it was NEARLY as good as if it had come straight from the refrigerator door.
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