What’s happened to the underwater event that brought teenagers across the world together?
What has happened to the socially-wet get-together that taught teenagers and adults alike how to serve a nice hot cup ‘o tea to their fellow bathingsuit-wearing pals while holding ones’ breath and existing in an alternate/wet universe? What has happened to holding your pinky up as you lift your imaginary underwater cup of hot steaming tea and take a sip while holding your breath while in the latest styles of swimwear while nodding and smiling and blowing bubbles from your mouth?
The underwater tea party is dead, my friends. Dead, I tell you.
These days, technology has replaced the underwater tea party with things like remote-control submarines and (in some areas of the country) half-filled bottles of Jack Daniels that teenagers drop to the bottom of the pool with, then drink while underwater. Children now suspend themselves in a watery-grave and pretend to be dead. They fake their deaths and float upside down where the water meets the air instead of mouthing about the latest political events while pretending to drink a scalding hot cup of Earl Grey while sitting in a circle and trying to keep their Indian-styled butt down on the pool’s ground floor. People re-create underwater fight sequences and attempt to scare their friends in the chlorine flavored water…
But they do not drink tea.
I have thought long and hard about how we may bring back the underwater tea party. I have drawn up diagrams and graphs in an attempt to find the scientific solution to the rapid disappearance of the one innocent underwater cultural event that is rapidly finding itself at home with many of the world’s endangered species. I have come to only one conclusion.
Yeah, yeah. Celebrities.
If we can only form some kind of “Save the Underwater Tea Party” organization, there is a huge population of celebrites (who refuse to put themselves on the line by getting into real political issues) who would jump at the chance to try and save what has given so much back to society. If we could get Annie Liebovitz to take pictures of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie having their own underwater tea party, it might bring back the excitement and popularity that it has so depressingly lost.
In the end, my prognosis is not good. The underwater tea party is on its last legs, people. Now, it can only be saved by a widely-organized, hugely successful reinvigoration campaign, the likes of which no one has ever seen.
Sadly, it just may not be possible.
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