When we were kids they used to do better at cleaning the city’s drinking water. These days contaminants are so common that tap water isn’t considered safe in a lot of places, and even here in one of the wealthiest places in America we get boil orders so often I’ve just stopped drinking tap water…I even fill my dogs drinking fountain with bottled water for his protection.

That’s why the hose option is so novel for Gen X childhoods…we were the last generation to have clean safe drinking water come from any tap on the property.

Yes, we've been told that drinking from a garden hose that leeches plastic chemicals into the water is not a good thing. It won't kill you right away, but those forever plastics do embed in your bones for the long haul.

It's like prior generations who ate from dishes where the glazing process included lead. People ate off those plates and didn't die immediately, but they did suffer from health-related problems later as the lead became embedded in their bones for the long haul.

It's not courage to do what you've always done despite scientific evidence suggesting what you have always done is not healthy. In polite society, we call that choosing to be ignorant or thinking it's perfectly fine to pollute the air with "beautiful clean coal" because that's the way things were done before it became known that coal is neither clean or beautiful. Hey... can I bum a cigarette off of you?

I did it, and my kids did it. We survived.

We all did it, even my kids…until our water quality became poor due to bad maintenance by the government.

Gen X are those born between 1965 and 1980, which is WAY before my slot in the alphabet, yet I still drink from the garden hose though in so doing, I'm really not pretending to be one those old people you speak of.

In my case, I've actually become addicted to the taste of pure Gardena rubber who's corporate policy is to use actual rubber when making their garden hoses and not that cheap stuff that's full of polymers and silicone and won't roll up easy. Yes, I've been in and out of rehab but it does no good.

I wouldn't dare drink from the river. Wow. No telling what germs and bacteria you're getting from the river that could actually kill you.

I have done it.

I love the people who buy bottled water and don't realize how many brands are simply putting tap water into bottles.

Still do it to this day.

No one wanted to be weighed down carrying a fancy water bottle or fancy cup back then, or no one wanted to go back home to get a drink either since we spent the whole day outside.

Try drinking straight from a backyard tap.

Kids still do it. Some parents freak out about it os where it came from. In the 90's they started recommending against it because of lead and plasticisers leaching into the water. However keep on mind its the same hose used on portable potable water systems so there's a lot of hypocrisy there.