�Eliza was a water bottle in a crowd of juice boxes.��Day-Hay (in a short story she wrote)

Small children clamor for juice boxes. There is something about those squishy packages containing sweet syrup that children really love, even as the contents are squirting out those ridiculous little straws. Apple juice boxes are the best. What is second best seems to depend on the child. The worst juice box, however, beats any beverage in a cup and juice in a cup beats almost any beverage. Certainly, juice is more prized than water.

I like apple juice. But today, as an adult, I�d rather have a water bottle. A water bottle is dependable. It�s more straightforward. It won�t quench your thirst one moment and then make you thirstier the next. When the contents of a juice box are gone, they�re gone. All that�s left is sticky packaging. When a water bottle is empty, it can be refilled. You go to the sink, open the tap, and you�re back in business. A water bottle is enduring. Heck, thinking about it, I�d rather be a water bottle.

But I�m not twelve years old. At twelve, I would have wanted to be a juice box, especially if all around me were juice boxes, and even if they were full of apple juice and all I had to offer was fruit punch. If those around were sweet, I would have figured that being known as sweet was a good thing. It�s not that I didn�t have a mind of my own. No one has ever accused me of lacking a mind of my own. I might not even have wanted to actually be sweet. I�d just have wanted to be perceived as sweet.

Even at twelve, though, I knew that only the best juice boxes would have gotten away with being considered cute when the liquid came shooting up the straw. If the in-crowd did it, it would have been funny. If the rest of us did it, it would have been geeky�or disgusting. There�s a hierarchy even among juice boxes if those juice boxes are in middle school.

I look out at my girl scout troop and I watch them all struggle. Some are juice boxes by nature. Others are juice boxes by force of will. Some are water bottles who will just have to come to appreciate the joys and strengths of being water bottles and wait for adulthood for appreciation. Even the water bottles seem to squirt their contents a bit right now as though they need to see the contents to figure out how to regulate all that�s inside.

Me, I�m a water bottle and proud of it�but I�m not twelve and oh, am I glad I�ll never be twelve again.

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