beneaththepalemoonlight:

  In the line 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? 
  
Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person.

… This was my reply.

This is extremely infuriating and I wish you hadn’t sent it to me, because it makes me angry that older people are blaming younger people for their mistakes. ‘The green thing’ may not have been around in ‘their’ day, but there were engineers and scientists and everyday men inventing the machines that are now used to make these jobs easier. There was no ‘green thing’ but the ‘green thing’ had to be implemented based on the machines that were invented because people weren’t happy doing all that shit. The woman at the start who said she didn’t have ‘the green thing’ back in her day also didn’t have plastic bags back in her day, and most likely had her own bag she had to take to the supermarket then, so the first part of the story is bloody rubbish anyway. These ‘smartass young people’ are having to be smarter due to past generations laziness. We were born into a world of washing machines and disposable bottles and what not, we didn’t create it. Cars have been around for decades, and designs for centuries. Cars now produce much less shit than older cars do, showing that technology is improving in an attempt to reduce the harm to the environment. This is what is wrong with the world, no one wants to admit responsibility for fucking it up, so no one thinks they should take a step to remedy it, when in fact we are all guilty for the current state of the environment, and we should all be taking the necessary steps to fix it. Yes, the old methods weren’t as harmful to the environment but most things were made with bad chemicals or materials which either were harmful to the environment or the people using them. But it was THAT generation who designed all these things mentioned in the below email blaming it on the younger generation. Tell me, out of all the people who sent this email thinking they are high and mighty and have no responsibility to the environment, how many of them own cars? How many of them use a washing machine? How many of them own more than one tv? Funnily enough it is my generation who are bringing back wind and solar power, as the past generations were the ones who thought of using coal. The world, in particular the older generations need to wake up to themselves and stop shifting the blame. We are all at fault and suggesting otherwise is just plain immature. This planet is sustaining us, so why are we not sustaining it? Please send this back to whoever sent this to you, as it is so disgusting to blame an innocent generation who are trying to remedy things, because the older generation are too pig headed to see that they are just as much to blame.

Thanks Sheree, this is good!

(Source: ma-sheree)