The Blue Button

     Yesterday at work during snacktime, a kid got up to get a cup of water from the dispenser. "This water is freezing!" he announced, at which point nine other kids found it necessary to rise from their seats and shuffle over to taste the water for themselves.      "Someone pushed the blue button!" one of them exclaimed.
     The water stays at room temperature in its plastic jug unless a button is pushed--which triggers a little blue light--to make it cold.
     "This is pretty freezing," said E as she made her way back to her seat with her cup.
     "That's because someone pushed the blue button," A told her, and E nodded her concurrence.
     "Hey guys!" yelled a voice from across the room. "You have to taste this water! It's so cold! It's freezing! Someone must have pushed the blue button!"
     At this point Alyx and I had our heads down on the table trying to hide our laughter.
     "Hey A," Alyx said, stifling a giggle, "will you go over and see if someone pushed the blue button?"
     Without an instant of hesitation A rose from his seat, scurried across the room, and after a moment of scrutiny emerged at the scientific conclusion: "Yeah! They did! Someone pushed the blue button!"
     "That's it," I said to Alyx, "I have to taste some of this water for myself! I hear someone pushed the blue button." I grabbed a paper cup from the stack, filled it, and took a long gulp. "That's freezing!"
     "I bet you someone pushed the blue button," Alyx said.

To say that this room-wide discussion went on for ten minutes would be a conservative estimate. After the initial discovery that someone had pushed the blue button, a follow-up investigation had to be conducted by a group of kids who just could not believe that someone had pushed the blue button. When they had verified the claim that someone had indeed pushed the blue button, they then had to sample the water to see if it tasted like someone had pushed the blue button. Every single one of the twenty kids in the room had to make the discovery for themselves, and each time one cried out excitedly that the water was freezing and that someone had pushed the blue button, the others responded as if this were news to them. "Oh my gosh, it's soooooo cold!" they shouted. "Did you know that someone pushed the blue button?"

Eventually their interested petered out and that was the end...

...Until this afternoon when E went to fill up her cup and noticed, with renewed suprise and delight, that someone had pushed the blue button! "Taste this water," she said to me and held out her cup. "It's freezing!"
     "I know it is, E, I had some yesterday after someone pushed the blue button."
     "No, but taste this water. It's even colder!"
     When E and the rest of the kids were settled into their free-time activities, I approached Alyx who was at the computer looking up activities for next week. "I don't mean to alarm you," I said, "but have you tasted this water? It's freezing. I'm no detective, but I have a sneaking suspicion that someone has pushed the blue button."
     "I knew it!" she answered.

I can't wait until it occurs to them to figure out who pushed it.