We didn’t have this green thing back in the day. Young people today try to blame us for the environmental problems of today saying we didn’t care about what would happen to the future and that we didn’t try to save our environment for future generations. BULLOCKS!!!

You know when we were kids 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 truly recycled. Hell, I used to buy comics that way. We would go around collecting discarded bottle and take them back to the store and exchanged them for comics. Bet you can’t do that today.
But hey, 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 schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribbling’s. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. Those same bags with holes cut in and paint on them made good Halloween masks. 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. We jumped on our bikes and got places, We didn’t need no stinking stepper machines at the gym. Nope, we didn’t have the green thing in our day, no siree.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway 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 that cost a fortune because they had a fancy label on them. Christmas time was filled with presents that used life killing batteries by the dozen. Board games didn’t need batteries and expensive cell phones and laptops to played. Yup, we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back when I was a kid, 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 province of Ontario. Nowadays instead of going out we sit around watching 999 channels.

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. Nope, 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 never saw pictures of fish, or turtles or sea birds with plastic bottle rings stuck around their necks.

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 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint or store. We didn’t get a new cellphone every year and throw the old one in a dump or ship it off to some poor country who took these things apart hurting their health.

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? Boy you youngsters need to get a clue and get trained. Young people today love their gadgets and that’s great but remember you don’t need everything. Yes our generation began giving you these new toys and gadgets but it is up to you to take care of the environment because we did our share…NOW DO YOURS AND STOP BLAMING US FOR YOUR WASTEFULNESS.