My water bottle is absolutely disgusting. She has a dent straight down the middle like she has been folded in half, the majority of the paint is chipped off and the bottom has crashed into just about every surface under the sun. The Panther’s design team even helped me nickname her Cassie, short for catastrophe. Despite all the damage, I refuse to get rid of her. Cassie may be a catastrophe, but she is irreplaceable.
When people ask me why I keep her, I usually go for the simplest answer: she keeps my water cold. People tend not to argue past that. After all, she does truly keep my water cold (as many can tell from the extremely cold water that is constantly dripping out of her biggest dent), and what else would one need in a water bottle?
Despite the usual acceptance of that answer, I know the majority of people see right through it. At my youth group one night, I dropped Cassie down the tiled steps of the Jewish Community Center and everyone saw her handle split in half. The next week, I came back with her handle duct taped together, and the week after that I came in with a whole new cap for her.
At some point, this water bottle stopped being just a water bottle and I think that is made pretty clear to everyone in my life. I take Cassie everywhere with me, and when you take something with you to so many places, it becomes a part of you. In the same way that some of my friends have their staple pieces of jewelry that they wear, my water bottle is my accessory, and is with me at all times.
I got her at the beginning of 2024. I needed a new water bottle for camp and Owalas had just started trending, so I hopped on the bandwagon and got one. Cassie is 32 ounces with a purple body with a green and orange cap. I immediately fell in love. One of my biggest quirks is my love for water, with my friends even saying that I could cause a drought all on my own. Cassie made my favorite thing even more accessible to me since I could bring her everywhere. She was perfect to fit in any cupholder, small enough to keep on my desk without taking up too much space and big enough to not need to be refilled too often. As an extra plus, I loved the colors. I loved how cold my water was kept and I loved the sturdiness of her, where if I dropped her or she bumped into something, she would never dent too bad.
I started taking Cassie everywhere with me. She came to school with me, to all of my extracurriculars and ended up going to camp that summer and going up Mt. Washington alongside me. When I dropped her down a significant length of the mountain and she got her first large-scale dent, it never even crossed my mind that I could get a new water bottle. She had already been with me up this mountain, by far the craziest adventure of my life, so she deserved to be with me for many more.
And that is exactly what happened. We went white water rafting together, she came to Paris and Amsterdam with me, she has been to every one of my DJ gigs and every other adventure I have been on recently.
I think people tend to underestimate the bond that someone can gain with an inanimate object, especially a teenage girl. Seeing one thing every day brings people so much comfort. Like I said, it is the same as wearing the same necklace every day or wearing your favorite hoodie. As weird as it sounds, if you bring something with you everywhere, you build a connection, even if it is completely inanimate.
One of my friends has an Owala she treasures just like I treasure mine. In the same way that mine has marks of my clumsiness all over her, her water bottle got a matching scar with her when she fell at the same time as she dropped her water bottle and they got hit in the exact same place. Another friend sleeps with the same stuffed animals every single night, a habit she has had since she was little, even if the stuffed animals are ripped and their colors are fading.
All of these objects are worn down not because they were neglected, but because they have been loved. The dents, scratches or rips on an object most of the time reflect that it was present for a memorable moment, whether that be a trip, a long day or just a regular, routine day. Something that a lot of people do not understand if they do not have an object like this for themselves is that replacing these items would feel wrong, not because a new version would not function the same way, but because it would not hold the same meaning. Also, a new object would not have the same scars. The value of these objects is not about what it does, it comes from what it has seen you through.
So, if you have a strange, messed up object you take everywhere with you like I do, do not ever let anyone make you feel weird about it or as if you need to get a new one. Emotional support from humans is overrated anyways.
