Muddy Waters and I don't mean McKinley Morganfield either

Growing older, I have discovered that I now cherish things that I once took for granted. For example, water. It comes in many varieties, flavors, and forms but mostly it comes from the tap. Rarely do I think about the fact that I am bathing in a regurgitated, tepid pool of my own crap. I guess normally I don’t notice because the water is clear and tastes like, oh I don’t know, nothing! Recently, I have had the very rare opportunity to ingest toxins from our “crap” water and from the soil surrounding it and live to tell about it. Not only did I ingest this putrid liquid but I also cleaned my body in it or so I thought I was. About four weeks ago on a Sunday evening in my lovely town in the comfortable state of Mississippi, I felt thirsty and went to the tap to fill up. Well, when I turned the faucet on the water appeared brown. Not sort of brown or not really clear but brown. Brown like, you know, crap. I thought if I just ran the water for a few minutes like they do in the movies, the water will clear up. Boy was I dead wrong. Not only did it not clear up but it began having a very strong smell to it. Bleach. My brown, crap water smelled like bleach. Well, I thought, at least the bleach will counter the crap right? Not quite. The crap, bleach aroma began to waft through the house at lightening speeds and I had to run open the windows before the house exploded. At this point it was obvious I had to call the experts: the water company. When I called, a lovely young woman answered the phone and said, “No alerts been filed so water’s fine but I’ll let “them” know, send someone out.” Them? Who “them?” “Them” must’ve been busy or out of town because “them” didn’t come and neither did “they.” Then again, if no alerts have been issued then what was I worried about. Clearly, this young lady knew more about water than a mere civilian like me. I chose to bathe in this crap water but wanted to believe it was just “rusty pipes” or “iron in the water.” I also began to bottle up this brown water in case something happened to me then the CSI people would figure out it was the water after all. Days and weeks went by with the bleach aroma coming and going while the brown water turned less brown, more brown, almost clear, light brown, brown etc until one day I received the “Water Report” >music…dum dum dum< Yes, the water report arrived and with an almost “child after candy on Halloween look” in my eyes, I opened the report. Luckily, I was able to scan the report quickly now that I had mysteriously grown a third eye and an extra thumb. However, I may as well have been Helen Keller because the words on the page were not in laymen’s terms and meant nothing to me. I did, however, recognize “key” words like violated, unsafe, toxic, contaminated, boil, etc. There was really no point in my fake reading any further, the water obviously had issues as well as the city that allowed its people to consume and bathe in it for weeks, months. Don’t get me wrong, I am not getting all “EPA” on you and will not be turning “green” anytime soon. It was just utterly curious to me that this report came weeks after people had been bathing in it. Well, on the positive side, at least we have some things to be thankful for in my city…better vision and easier hitchhiking techniques.