Checking out at the store\u201a the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own shopping bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized and explained\u201a “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.” The cashier responded\u201a “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.” She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day. Back then\u201a we returned milk bottles\u201a pop bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled\u201a so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen\u201a 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 in our day. We walked up stairs\u201a because we didn’t have an escalator in every shop 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\u201a we washed the baby’s nappies because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line\u201a 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\u201a not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn’t have the green thing back in our day. Back then\u201a we had one TV\u201a or radio\u201a in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?)\u201a not a screen the size of the county of Yorkshire. In the kitchen\u201a 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 post\u201a we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it\u201a not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then\u201a 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. 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 water from a fountain or a tap when we were thirsty instead of demanding a plastic bottle flown in from another country. We accepted that a lot of food was seasonal and didn\u2019t expect that to be bucked by flying it thousands of air miles around the world. We actually cooked food that didn\u2019t come out of a packet\u201a tin or plastic wrap and we could even wash our own vegetables and chop our own salad. But we didn’t have the green thing back then. Back then\u201a people took the tram or a bus\u201a and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mothers into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room\u201a 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\u201a000 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? Remember: Don’t make old people mad. We don’t like being old in the first place\u201a so it doesn’t take much to p*** us off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Checking out at the store\u201a the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own shopping bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized and explained\u201a “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.” The cashier responded\u201a “That’s our problem today. Your generation did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1103,"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions\/1103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}