How Americans Drank Water Before The Stanley Cup: A Timeline Across Decades 

1960s: Americans too busy smoking cigarettes to drink water

Think about it– unless you had two mouths, you couldn’t do both at the same time. Doctors were more concerned with people smoking the right brand of cancer sticks to curb their dessert appetite after dinner than letting folks in on the benefits of drinking a glass of simple H20. If you revisit the 7 seasons of Mad Men, you’ll find that indeed not a single character had one sip of anything that wasn’t brown liquor the entire time.

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1970s: People begin drinking Perrier sparkling water, but only in restaurants These bubbles started a French Bev-olution in this bitch. The classic green plastic bottles put the “class” in class action lawsuit, as traces of the toxic chemical compound benzene were found in some batches. Ooh la la!

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1980s: The office water cooler arrives on the scene, but the vehicle for ingesting said water is a 3-oz paper cone as seen at the dentist’s spit station

People start considering hydrating throughout the day, but only as a means to procrastinate soulless paperwork, and only one-and-a-quarter sips’ worth at a time. Newfound data shows that a whopping 73% of all millennial babies were actually conceived by two bored heterosexual coworkers after sparking a Bruce-Springsteen-centered convo at the break room oasis.

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1990s: Humans begin buying plastic water bottles in order to shake up powders like Crystal Light and Kool-Aid inside of them

Before dieting moms and their brainwashed children could fathom the idea of drinking plain water by itself, they immediately resorted to dumping fruity cocaine into it to make it taste less like boring-ass water and more like anything else, preferably a wine cooler.

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2000s: Breaking news surfaces that human bodies are 60% water, thus the reusable water bottle gains popularity

These babies were still made of toxic plastic, but harder, more durable toxic plastic. Among these are 1) the famous orange-and-green Gatorade squirt-y bottle that your buddy could aim and shoot into your gullet from half court, a sight only rivaled by the friggin Bellagio Fountain Christmas Show, and 2) the dingy Nalgene bottle with a mouth so gaping-wide you ended up wearing the sip of water you foolishly tried to take while walking.

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2010s: Hydro Flask (24oz) enters the chat

VSCO girls pose with these steel weapons of mass hydration like they’re the new Birkin bag. The only downside is frequent bladder infections and gradual hearing loss from the ear-splitting sound of one of these things dropping on a hard floor. Hydration Era begins.

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2020: Hydration Era levels up with the 1-gallon Hydro Flask

You’ve seen this guy at the gym. Out of the corner of your eye, you thought that steroid factory of a man was making out with a squat rack plate in between sets, but after a double-take you realized he was simply putting his lips on his gigantic black Hydro Flask to take a passionate swig.

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2024 (Present Day): Stanley Cup Craze sets the nation ablaze

After one of these puppies survives a literal car fire AND the brand cops the endorsement of one blonde influencer beloved from her days on the Bachelor (a PR cocktail as old as time), these coveted cups become the only acceptable vessel for the vital resource. Crazed customers are getting into even more aggressive tug-of-wars than normal at their local Target, wives are leaving husbands who gift them a bad color, fashionistas are coordinating their outfit on any given day to match one of their 35 cups… it’s a mad world, and it’s only just begun.

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2030s: Stanley Cup and Tesla collaborate to make the first water-fueled car that you drink from while you drive

Have you ever seen someone blow into a breathalyzer before starting their car? Yes, like Uncle Rick ever since that Thanksgiving incident last year, exactly! Ok, so imagine the same thing, but he’s sipping the water in like it’s a two-ton Camelback on wheels. After all, the Stanley Cup tapered bottom was built to fit into car cup holders by design, and water-fueled cars are already a thing, so this is the logical next step in the Hydration Era and you’d have to be some sort of degenerate anarchist not to accept this societal progression.

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2040s: The U.S. passes a law to replace water towers in all boring cities with giant Stanley Cups

You want to know how to increase tourism in Pleasantville, Ohio? Let’s start by tearing down that eye sore of a rusty robot jellyfish and replace it with something that Americans will line up to see, just like they lined up outside of that Starbucks at 4am 20 years ago for a hot pink version of the same cup they already have in light pink. These functional masterpieces will be the new Mount Rushmore.

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2050s: America predicted to run out of fresh drinking water

We will have overdone it a bit on the water-drinking. All Stanley Cups, Hydro Flasks, Nalgenes, and Gatorade squirt-y bottles will be donated as artifacts to The Whitney Museum as part of a special exhibit. There will still be plenty of White Claws left to suffice as the next closest thing to fresh agua.

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2060: Water-flavored White Claw will quench our long-lived thirst

In a hyper-creative drunken stupor from only drinking spiked seltzers for a decade, the nation’s top brains come together to create water-flavored White Claw to satisfy our nostalgic longing for the taste of water. Everyone is intoxicated enough to put political differences behind them for the rest of time.