This one was sent to me by my good friend, Ellen.
Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags are not good for the environment.
The woman apologized to the young girl 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.”
The
older lady said that she was right — our generation didn’t have the “green
thing” in its day. The older lady went on to
explain:
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 and 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
school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for
our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able
to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But, too bad 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 throw away 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 blade 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 sad the current
generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have
the “green thing” back then?
Please forward this on to another
selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart ass young
person.
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.
