The Green Thing.

I was reading the local free booklet we get delivered once every so often this afternoon and a piece in it really amused me.
I am not admitting to fitting into the age group all of this will apply to but see how many of you have a secret smile or even a big grin after reading this...

In a line at the supermarket, 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 apologised to him and explained "we didn't have the green thing back in my day"

The cashier 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 it's day. Back then we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the off licence. They sent them back to the plant to be washed, sterilised, refilled and reused. So it could use the same bottles over and over. So really they were being recycled. But we didn't have the green thing in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have lifts and escalators in every shop and office building, we walked to the local shops we didn't climb into a 300 horsepower machine every time we had to go to the supermarket. We bought fruit and veg loose and washed them at home. We didn't have to throw away bins full of plastic, foam and paper packaging that need huge recycling plants fed by monster trucks all day every day. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then we washed the babies nappies 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, mostly hand made or hand knitted, from their brothers or sisters, not always brand new clothing shipped from the other side of the world. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then shops repaired things with funny things called spare parts, we didn't need to throw the whole item away because a small part failed. Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house not a TV in every room. The TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?) Not a screen the size of Wales. 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 petrol just to cut the lawn, we used a push mower that ran on human power and hand clippers for the hedges. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a brightly lit, air conditioned health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity and then drink millions of bottles of that special water from those plastic bottles. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new plastic pen, we replaced blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole plastic razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing.

Back then people took the bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning parents into a 24 hour taxi service. We had one electric outlet in a room not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. We didn't need a computerised gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest fish and chip shop.

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 ?

Go on admit it you smiled.