Everything I drank tasted fine, but it seemed sometimes that water flowed a bit too slowly from the bottle, swished a bit too heavily in my mouth. It was barely noticeable. I was probably imagining it. But it was just weird enough to mention to my camping buddy Eli.
“Your bottle’s gone bad, I guess,” said Eli. “Just get a new one.”
“My bottle’s gone bad?”
Eli nodded sagely, the way he did when he was talking out of his ass. But the next time I was at the store, I dropped a brand new metal bottle into my cart. I’d been dragging my old one on backpacking trips since I was a kid, long enough that I knew the exact shape and weight of it in my hands. Over the years, it’d collected dents and scrapes and stickers and memories.
