Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days."
The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."
She was right -- our generation didn't have the 'green thing' in our day.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles, and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed, sterilized, and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over.
So they really were recycled.
But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.
Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable, besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribbling. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown bag but we didn't do the "green thing" back then.
We walked up stairs because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.
But she was right. We didn't have the "green thing" in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line -- not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.
But that young lady is right; we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.
Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana .
In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.
But she's right; we didn't have the "green thing" back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.
But we didn't have the "green thing" back then.
Back then people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the "green thing." We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.
But isn't it said the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the "green thing" back then?
We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off . . . especially from a tattooed, multiple pierced smartass who can't make change without the cash register telling them how much.
Stupid little shit.
(An addendum)
5 comments:
Yeah! Dial phones and nuns - and what you said. :)
I often wish, that at the very least, I could get milk, juice, etc. in glass bottles. I also wish the Fed govt would turn border security, transportation security, etc. over to the packaging industry. Perhaps if they were otherwise occupied, I could open packaging without a pocketknife, kitchen shears, a screwdriver, and a bunch of profanity.
Jay in N.C.
Since when did 'The Green Thing' become pre-technology? Everyone back in the day would have gleefully used every modern convenience instead of what the email claimed was 'green' (I didn't see miles per gallon in it, somehow) if they had the chance. The environment is fucked because people are people, not because the past was more virtuous.
Glass bottles are horrible. So much weight for a mere packaging. And milk degrades due to light in glass bottles.
I'd like to see 5 litre tin barrels as the standard unit of beverage packaging - preferably with a folding grip on top.
These exist for beers in Germany, and are much more practical than small bottles or even 2 litre PET bottles for soda.
Since they outlawed disposable plastic grocery bags here, the stores have simply come up with the cheapest containers they can legally call reusable, and charge a buck a piece for them at the checkout if you forget to bring your own. Some use the old brown paper bags with paper handles attached to the top. I have enough of them now, that I never forget mine.
It's been a while, though, since I've seen one of those old plastic ones blowing along in the wind like a tumbleweed, so in that sense the law has been a success. Glad to see them go, too.
-Doug in Oakland
S O, I'm with you all the way with the 5-litre tin barrels. Especially for beer!
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