Water Bottle Found After Club Meeting

After the club meeting ended yesterday evening, one student realized a water bottle was left behind, not knowing whose it was. 

“I saw it and I wondered, ‘is this ours? Or, like, was this here before the meeting?’ I didn’t know,” said Jack Whittelsey ‘22. 

A brief investigation of the stickers (Winter Carnival ’19, New Hampshire, Dartmouth Dems and a cartoon of a seal) revealed little about the owner, and Whittelsey began pacing around the room, wondering whose it could be. He couldn’t abandon the water bottle to the meeting room, cold and alone. 

“No one said it was theirs in the GroupMe,” said Whittelsey. He sighed at the water bottle. “Do I take it with me?” Nervously, he ran his hand through his hair before saying, pained, “I don’t think I’m ready for that type of responsibility.”

The water bottle remained about one-eighth full, sitting next to a chair. 

“Who do you belong to?” Whittelsey asked the water bottle. He stared at it. 

He picked up his phone and messaged, frantically, all the GroupMes he knew. He felt he simply couldn’t leave that water bottle behind. 

No one answered the GroupMes that night, and Whittelsey took the water bottle home with him when the janitor closed down the building. “Something about taking the bottle felt wrong,” Whittelsey explained. “It feels like kidnapping.” He gazed tenderly at the bottle. “This one isn’t mine.”

Whittelsey did not spend the night doing homework, nor did he get an adequate amount of sleep. Instead, Whittesley frantically searched for the water bottle’s guardian until finally, around 5:54 AM, he ventured outside to the Hanover Fire Department. Hurrying to avoid streetlights and the coming dawn, he swathed the bottle in his only face towel, placed in a box beside his attempt at home-made baby food as well as a slightly smaller bottle of water, and placed it gently outside of the station. He let go of the box. He gazed down at it, full of hope. Then, wiping his eyes and sighing loudly, he forced himself away, but not before looking back once more at the water bottle, quiet and alone. 

-SL ’22