The Green Thing!! - Page 1

Don't really post anything but liked this....

 

‎Terra Barton III‎ to The Fabulous Fifties
September 11 at 1:53 PM

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 toexplain: 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.

Built in obsolescence into so many things like smart phones and such.  My iPhone is perfectly usable except each update makes it slower and less usable, the common response when I take it in for an overheating battery (I am on my third one since an update the first of the year) is "you need to get a new phone.  Same thing with my brother's Android.  Such a shame.  Nothing is build to last any more.

This - or versions of it - has been doing the rounds on the Net for years now. Anyone else like me think it misses the point ? Yes of course those of us who grew up with all these old-fashioned privations have already 'done our bit' (even if at the time, because we didn't have much choice, we were not really aware we were so much better for the planet.)

But hard as it may be to admit guys, WE are actually not the problem anyway. WE are the 'grandparents' generation. The actual day-by-day culprits are those people in their 30s & 40s, the parents of the new generation who are now protesting.

Because those people, our children's generation, have always had everything there for them to use, they did not have to grapple with the changes in living conditions, the paucity of facilities; WE are responsible in that we probably did not work very hard to teach them NOT to take all the modern advantages for granted, but basically it is their total acceptance in use of all those things which rely on fossil fuels that have brought us to the current mess.

Hundmutter, since I don't really browse the internet other than here, this is the first I have seen the post I made. So it may be old to many it's new to me and I found it funny really,!!

Well it IS amusing, yes - but it was funnier when it first appeared, because then it was a little closer in time to being more relevant ...

Sorry, but I still think it's relevant at least to people my age.