The World Is Again Safe From Water Bottles

Standing in line outside Staples Center with my 13-year-old daughter about 90 minutes before the recent Britney Spears concert, the security phalanx appeared formidable.

Men in suits were everywhere, barking into walkie-talkies, holstered weaponry at the ready.

Airport-style metal detectors loomed at the arena entrance, where scowling men holding scanning wands outnumbered the staffers taking tickets.

We surely have become a different country in this post-Sept. 11 world. Nothing will ever be the same again.

Then, 15 minutes later when I accompanied my daughter to the arena concession stand to purchase dinner, when I was reminded that this is still very much America we’re living in after all.

We ordered small pizzas and bottles of water. While retrieving the water, the woman behind the counter cautioned that she would have to remove the cap and toss it out before handing over the bottle.

As this sounded peculiar, I asked, “Is there some specific reason why we can’t be trusted to open our own water?”

Could someone have figured out a way to turn these benign white plastic caps into hurling weapons? Might they have been found to be a baby choking hazard?

No on both counts.

“We’re required to remove the cap because someone complained a couple of months ago,” the concession lady explained.

“Complained about what, exactly?” I asked, still befuddled.

“They cut themselves opening the water and sued,” she replied

Now I was really dumbfounded.

“And you would be ... serious?”

Indeed the woman was. And so she did as she was required, removing the tops from the two water bottles.

Thus, the plastic water bottle top has now apparently joined the box cutter and the nail file as an instrument of potential injury or harm.

It’s inspiring to know that Staples Center has been thrust onto the cutting edge (so to speak) of the fledgling movement to protect the public from this deceptively dangerous round of molded plastic.

It can’t be long before an outcry is heard over such long-ignored physical threats to our person as the paper napkin, the flexible straw, the facial tissue, the plastic button and the Styrofoam cup. With the memories of kamikaze terrorists still agonizingly fresh, the list of diverting trivialities is fairly limitless.

Surely we can all take comfort that the nation that produced the McDonald’s hot coffee lawsuit hasn’t lost its way. It remains the land of the freak and the home of the brazen.

And compared with something involving a plastic cap, the coffee suit would appear positively meritorious and urgent.

Predictably enough, the evening produced not a single evident injury from a beverage container. Our water remained safely topless; the entertainment, nearly so.

And as I sat watching the gyrations of a mega-marketed 19-year-old pop diva, it felt strangely reassuring to live in a nation where sticks and stones can still break your bones, but water bottle tops at a Staples Center event will never again hurt you.