The water cycle is one of the first ideas taught to kids in elementary school. It is the idea that new water can not be created, water just goes through different processes but all in all the water is the same water. In other words, we could drink the same water Abraham Lincoln drank in 1865. Or the same water Beyoncé drank during her Coachella perfomance of 2018. You could be drinking legendary water.

Just to be sure that my thinking was correct I did some research and asked biology teacher, Lisa Horsch. “You could be drinking water that was in pee,” Horsch said.

Of course only giving a response after a few awkward moments and a questioning expression.

Think about it this way, Abraham Lincoln drank some water because he was parched after doing some presidential stuff . It went through his digestive system and he eventually expelled it from his body into a hole in an outhouse. From there, the water soaked into the soil or eventually made it’s way to the ocean. As time passed it evaporated. The water then reached the atmosphere and condensated, creating clouds. Once those clouds got heavy with moisture, the water was released in the form of precipitation, or rain. The water fell into the soil or bodies of water. The water in the soil just got evaporated again, however the water from the bodies of water went to filtration plants and was made back into drinking water. The same process happened with the Beyoncé water, just a little more modern. That overall is just wack.

Then, going into a much broader idea, we are drinking water that was once in someone else’s body. Someone drank and then expelled the exact water you are drinking. The water has been throughly cleaned and cleansed by water filtration plants before the water got to you. However, it is just gross to know that my water was once pee and sweat.

“I’ve never thought of it that way,” Trevor Fizpatrick ’22 said. “You aren’t wrong.” Indeed I am not wrong, how has no one thought of this before? You could be drinking the pee of royalty or of Hitler. Water has connected you with thousands of different people that you do not know, and have never met.

That makes me feel uneasy, and that sentiment is shared among the student body. “I’m uncomfortable,” Jackson Ramaekers ’20 said.