Only in This Stupid World …..do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.
Only in This Stupid World …..do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the Store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.
Only in This Stupid World….do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet Coke.
Only in This Stupid World….do banks leave vault doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.
Only in This Stupid World ……….do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in Packages of eight..
Only in This Stupid World ….do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.
Why the sun lightens our hair, but darkens our skin? Why don’t you ever see the Headline ‘Psychic Wins Lottery’? Why is ‘abbreviated’ such a long word? Why is it that Doctors call what they do ‘practice?’ Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons? Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker? Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour? Why didn’t Noah swat those two mosquitoes? Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal injections? You know that Indestructible black box that is used on airplanes? Why don’t they make the whole plane out of that stuff? Why don’t sheep shrink when it rains? Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together? If con is the opposite of Pro, is Congress the opposite of progress? If flying is so Safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?
Checking out at the store, 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, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”
The cashier responded, “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, we returned milk bottles, pop 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.
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 in our day.
We walked up stairs, 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, 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 county.
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 post, 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 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’t expect it to be flown in from other parts of the world thousands of kilometers away.
We actually cooked food that didn’t come out of a packet, 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, people took the streetcar or a bus, 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, 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 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 young person. We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off…
Loren Berg's Blog 