Dear Gen Z, we see your TikToks, your memes, your concerned faces when someone mentions drinking out of a garden hose. To you, it’s baffling. “Why didn’t they use a Brita?” “Wasn’t the water hot and full of rubber flavor?” “Did they not care about heavy metals?” You’re not wrong to wonder—but we need to talk. We, the millennials born roughly between 1981 and 1996, didn’t drink out of the garden hose because we were too lazy to go inside or because filtered water didn’t exist. We drank out of the hose because in the summertime, we were never inside. The house was a base. A starting point. A refueling station. But from sunup to sundown, the real action happened outside. And when you’re eight years old, covered in sweat, grass stains, and dust, there’s no time to find a clean cup and wait for the faucet to get cold. The hose was there. The hose was life.
In the 1980s and 1990s, a typical summer day for a kid didn’t involve Wi-Fi, air conditioning, or YouTube. It involved hopping on a bike at 9:00 a.m. with zero specific plans and zero communication devices. Maybe your parents knew the general direction you were headed—”the park,” “Joey’s house,” “down by the creek”—but most of the time, we just roamed. We made up our own games. We wandered through neighborhoods. We went to the woods to build forts or find frogs. We played pickup basketball with kids we barely knew, created soapbox derby courses down dangerous hills, or invented complicated pretend storylines with action figures in someone’s backyard. You were lucky if someone’s mom left out a cooler of Capri Suns. But more often than not, hydration meant one thing: a garden hose snaking out from the side of a house, baking in the sun, waiting for a twist of the handle and a shot of lukewarm metallic bliss.
Yes, it was warm at first. Yes, it tasted like rubber and mystery minerals. But in that moment, it was also freedom. You didn’t have to knock on the door and ask someone’s mom if you could come in. You didn’t have to take your shoes off or track mud through a kitchen or explain what you’d been doing. You turned the spigot, sprayed out the hot water, bent down, and slurped it like a wild animal. That water was badge-of-honor water. It tasted like scraped knees, like freedom, like childhood autonomy.
You see, there wasn’t a lot of micromanaging going on back then. Helicopter parenting hadn’t landed yet. We had rules, sure—be back by dinner, don’t go past the main road, don’t set anything on fire—but within those boundaries, we were feral. We were expected to entertain ourselves, and we did, spectacularly. Entire days unfolded without adult supervision or schedules. And when you’re moving constantly—running through sprinklers, climbing trees, jumping into backyard pools, setting up lemonade stands, or rollerblading around the block—you burn through your body’s water supply quickly. Hydration wasn’t a carefully planned activity with stainless steel tumblers and electrolyte tablets. It was opportunistic. You drank water when you found it. And most of the time, you found it in the hose.
There was no such thing as “hydration anxiety.” We didn’t carry water bottles—nobody did. If you tried to bring one, you’d lose it or forget it somewhere between the swingset and the ravine. You learned to live off the land, so to speak. If a neighbor had a hose, and you were friendly enough with their kids, that was your water source. If it wasn’t on, you figured out how to turn it on. The hose wasn’t gross—it was utilitarian. It was our oasis.
Now, it’s true that millennials didn’t have the same level of environmental or health awareness as Gen Z does. We weren’t testing our tap water or worrying about microplastics. But it’s not like we were being reckless. We were just part of a different rhythm. Life happened outside in the summer, and that meant our standards were a little… relaxed. Dirt under the nails? Normal. Eating an unwashed apple from a tree? Delicious. Drinking sun-heated hose water with a faint taste of vinyl? No problem. It was all part of the grand summer adventure.
Part of why this seems so strange to Gen Z is that your summers are built differently. You have access to endless entertainment inside—streaming, gaming, social media, Discord servers, FaceTime. And the world you’ve inherited is more complex, more connected, and in many ways, more cautious. Safety and sanitation are rightfully emphasized. You’ve grown up in an era where clean water is a carefully packaged commodity and not just something that flows from any rubber snake on the side of a house. It makes perfect sense that the idea of hose water feels prehistoric to you. But back in the ’80s and ’90s, nobody was thinking that hard about it. We were too busy climbing fences and chasing ice cream trucks.
It’s important to remember that the hose was more than just a drinking fountain. It was a tool of summer joy. You could make it into a sprinkler, fill up a kiddie pool, blast your siblings, flood your sandbox, or fill a bucket for a water balloon fight. The hose was endlessly versatile. It was the Swiss Army knife of childhood hydration and play. To this day, the smell of hot rubber and chlorinated water hitting dry pavement can send millennials into a nostalgic tailspin.
So yes, Gen Z, we really did drink out of the hose. And no, it wasn’t some weird, desperate act. It was practical. It was efficient. It was normal. When you lived outside all day, the hose was the hydration station. The idea of going inside to get a glass of ice water—well, that was an interruption. Why stop the fun? Why break the flow of the day to walk inside, cool off, and possibly get roped into chores? The hose let us stay wild. It let us stay free.
Maybe your summers look different now. And that’s okay. Times change. But if you ever want to understand a millennial summer, don’t look in a photo album. Go find an old green hose, let the hot water blast out, then lean in and take a sip. It won’t be cold. It won’t be crisp. But for one moment, you’ll understand why that strange, lukewarm water tasted like absolute magic.
