I still can’t believe this and Caroline may never recover from her shock – we may sue someone. With our favorite little red watering can full to the brim with plant-nourishing water, Caroline as on so many other days for the previous 10+ years, went out to water her plants. Today though, would not be the familiar routine we had grown accustomed to. The handle broke right off with the bucket, still full of good clean American water we paid for, falling to the ground and exploding with a loud crash. I raced to the front balcony to witness the look of distress on my wife’s face and a red lonely handle still in her grip. She may have been crying, although it could also have been some of the splashing water from the ripped-open now-dead watering can.

You can imagine our anger that this cheap Chinese-made water bucket only lasted a year or so more than a decade. I am certain had we been able to buy a good old American-made plastic bucket, it could have lasted 50 years because our plastic is superior to that foreign stuff. American plastic is only made with oil drilled in Texas because it is big and tough, like gristle from an old cow. We decided not to sue this time, but if this $5.99 plastic water bucket we replaced our beloved bucket with doesn’t last at least 20 years, there’ll be hell to pay in China.