Drinking from the hose (by Helen)

When Ken and I went to the zoo there were men all over with hoses cleaning cage windows, sidewalks, etc. In front of the monkey cage while the windows were being cleaned, a boy came up to one of the men and asked for a drink. The man obliged and held out the hose from which the boy gratefully drank. The man smiled, the boy smiled, the mom smiled, and off the little boy went. Now when I was a little girl you never went into a neighbors house for a drink, you simply drank from the hose. Can you imagine that scene in the US today? The mom would be screaming and cursing that man for allowing her child to drink from a contaminated hose that emits all kinds of hose poison. And you know, there have been studies regarding that very hose poison. (Although I never met anybody who died by hose.) In the US nobody would have been smiling.