The Green Generation

I don't normally post from an internet story, but this one was so true I couldn't resist.  Ok, not my words,  (I've added mine in red)  but certainly what is accurate....

Checking out at the grocery store recently, the young cashier suggested I should bring my own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. I apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days." The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right about one thing -- our generation didn't have the green thing in “Our” day. So what did we have back then…? After some reflection and soul-searching on "Our" day here's what I remembered we did have.... 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 repeatedly. So they really were recycled.

And we left with our groceries in paper bags, you know the B I O D E G R A D A B L E kind?

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 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.

When we turned 18, we likely got some clothes or some money, we didn't get a financed trip to the plastic surgeon to buy some Barbie Doll boobs making us all look like a relative of Dolly Parton.   Our mothers and grandmothers faces and breasts fell as God intended them too.  They didn't have them drawn back, pushed up and their lips implanted to make themselves looks some cartoon character like this.

 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.

We had stray mutts as our pets, not some designer dog born in a disgusting puppy mill paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars feeding an industry that should never have been created to begin with.


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.

Neither our house, school or family car had air conditioning, which forced us outside in the hot summer and kept us from being obese children playing tag, hide and seek and climbing trees.

Our schools were just schools.  They didn't have swimming pools and NFL type football fields.  Our football fields were just FIELDS with a few bleachers lined up on the sides.  They were the same fields that we used to play field hockey in summer school.


We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty or the garden hose in the summer 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?