These poor bastards didn’t have the green thing either.
The most annoying thing about human beings is that we have a ridiculously short lifespan from a cosmic perspective, and an even shorter memory. This gives us the habit of thinking that every important event that will happen is likely to take place in our lifetimes, the most important time in all of history. And although we’re too advanced to believe in celestial deities anymore, we’re still fairly gullible when it comes to falling for the hell fire. Hence the reason we’re able to simultaneously mock the Mayan calender for ending in 2012 while in all seriousness predict cataclysmic climate change will end life on earth. We’re wonderfully naive like that.
What’s equally as annoying is that we, the twenty and thirty-somethings of planet earth, actually believe we’re the first people to conceive of the problems we face today, and thanks to our enlightened way of thinking we have time to fix them all. It is therefore the responsibility of every young person to undo the great damage done by our thoughtless and careless parents and grandparents, who selfishly ravaged the great blue planet of her beauty in the name of heedless progress.
I think it’s fairly commonly told to young people today, particularly by environmental movements like the David Suzuki foundation, that old people are responsible for the state of the world as it is today, and that only they can prevent these fuddy duddies from continuing to poison the planet. But educating these bewildered aged citizens of our society to do the simplest things, such as observing Earth Hour or putting empty milk jugs in the blue box, is a great burden for the young.
Indeed, just trying to get them to bring reusable grocery bags would be a great accomplishment. To wit:
In the queue at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized to him and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”
The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment.”
He 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. 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.
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 the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old 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 a wadded up old newspaper 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. 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.
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?
Well, thank goodness we have the iPad generation to help you understand the error of your ways.
