The "Green Thing"
(A friend in Canada emailed me this, and it struck a chord. For now, author unknown. Comments by me in italics.)
"At the checkout, the young girl suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bag because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized and said, "We didn't have this green thing in my younger days."
The checkout girl responded, "That's our problem now. 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 its day.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles, and beer bottles to the store. [There were no soda or beer bottles in my family home, but yes, we returned the milk bottles every day.] The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. They really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
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. [We didn't have one anyway]. 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 throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a clothesline, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in those days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing [in fact, very rarely, and they were made by my mother.] But that young lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in our day.
Back then, we had one TV [if that!] and one radio in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief, 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. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up 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 gym to run on treadmills that operate on (yet more) electricity. But she's right. We didn't have the green thing back then.
We drank from a water fountain or the tap when we were thirsty, instead of using a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying new ones, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade had got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.
Back then, people took the bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked, instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. 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 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint. [We didn't have any 'pizza joints' in Dublin then, but we knew what was on in the local cinema, by word of mouth.]
So isn't it sad that the current generation laments how wasteful we older folks were, just because we didn't have the 'green thing' back then?"
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"At the checkout, the young girl suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bag because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized and said, "We didn't have this green thing in my younger days."
The checkout girl responded, "That's our problem now. 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 its day.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles, and beer bottles to the store. [There were no soda or beer bottles in my family home, but yes, we returned the milk bottles every day.] The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. They really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
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. [We didn't have one anyway]. 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 throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a clothesline, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in those days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing [in fact, very rarely, and they were made by my mother.] But that young lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in our day.
Back then, we had one TV [if that!] and one radio in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief, 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. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up 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 gym to run on treadmills that operate on (yet more) electricity. But she's right. We didn't have the green thing back then.
We drank from a water fountain or the tap when we were thirsty, instead of using a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying new ones, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade had got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.
Back then, people took the bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked, instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. 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 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint. [We didn't have any 'pizza joints' in Dublin then, but we knew what was on in the local cinema, by word of mouth.]
So isn't it sad that the current generation laments how wasteful we older folks were, just because we didn't have the 'green thing' back then?"
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Thanks Sue :)
