Tony At 10: GOING GREEN; BLOG # 147; SEP 5, 2014

THE MESSAGE:

ARE YOU "GOING GREEN?"

Ethel, An elderly woman, was checking out at the grocery store. The young cashier suggested she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. Ethel apologized and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days."

The young clerk responded, "That's the 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 they could use the same bottles over and over.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Household garbage, kids’ building blocks, marbles and chestnuts to mention a few.

We also took care to fashion schoolbook covers out of the bags so as to preserve them for other kids to use. We drew faces on them and cut holes for our Halloween masks.

FUGGETTABOUTIT!

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 jump into a 300-horsepower vehicle 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. Wind and solar power really did work in drying our clothes back in the day. They didn’t build expensive, huge monuments to stupidity that the Government called ‘the way of the future’.

Nobody left carbon footprints; we used moccasins and sneakers.

Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. They didn’t demand the latest fashions or coolest jackets or cell phones.

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 not a screen the size of the Province of Ontario.

There weren’t any remote controls or game boxes. We actually had to get up off our asses to change the one of five channels.

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.

When wrapping a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

But isn't it commendable that the current generation has been taught how wasteful we old folks were. Dammit I wish had the "green thing" back then! I would not have had to walk to school and back.

All I can say is that I don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss me off!

Especially if the offender is a smartass, tattooed, young person with multiple facial piercings and noisy gum who can't make change without the cash register telling them how much to give back .……. The stupid little shit!