Is My Bottled Water Alive?

The Fiji Water Girl.

In 1999, I rented a 4th floor office in the Equitable Building at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. The 1927 building had a storied past with offices once rented by filmmakers like Billy Wilder, Frank Capra and Dalton Trumbo. The building had fallen on hard times. During the time I worked there, tenants included a porn video distributor, a chocolate covered potato-chip maker and a pillow-making business called the Mother Plucker Feather Company.

I worked as an independent phone salesman for a vinyl record pressing plant. My job was to contact record companies to procure their vinyl business. One sweltering August day I was making calls while coping with the 100-degree heat. Sweat dripped from my brow into my eyes. I reached for a bottle of Fiji Water and took a long cool sip.

That’s when I noticed several squiggly objects floating in the water. They were small, translucent and gelatinous and appeared to be moving. I looked closer. They resembled sea monkeys like the kind you’d see in a child’s novelty aquarium kit.

I removed the bottle cap and took a whiff. There was no discernible smell, just the slight odor of polycarbonate. I positioned the bottle in the sunlight. The squigglies were everywhere. I read the contents on the back label. Calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium and 93.4 milligrams of silica. I googled “silica in bottled water” and…