I was forwarded this story in an email:

"In the line at the store, the check-out girl told an older man that he should bring his own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. The man apologized to her and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day." The girl responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment."
She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.Back then, we returned milk bottles, soft-drink bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the factory to be washed and sterilised 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 motor vehicle 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 240 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 young lady was 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 Alaska! 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 bubbler 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 Metro 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 outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerised 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 “Know-it-all” young person.
Remember: Don't make old people mad. They don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to tick them off."
...

Dear Old People,

“Back in my day, our families bathed in the same water one-by-one and then brushed our teeth with it. Then the water was used in the preparation of the next day's soup!"

Sorry to interrupt your masturbatory nostalgia, old people, but who do you think invented all the wasteful conveniences you’re railing against here? Was it the Kaiser? Did that rotten scoundrel trick you into driving 5-mile-per-gallon automobiles? Did Stalin force you to buy disposable diapers, to drink bottled water, or to “escalate”? Because I was under the apparently mistaken impression that this was all your bullshit.

You came out of the Depression and jumped face-first into a wasteful, parasitic consumer culture like a fat man and a bowl of pudding, and you never thought twice about it. You sprawled the landscape with wasteful suburban homes—while making sure to keep “those negroes” out, of course—so you could safely surround yourself with the latest in plastic and electronic garbage in a vain attempt to forget the meaninglessness of your shallow, forsaken lives. You enslaved brown people to make it possible and you went to war to protect it. And then you taught your children that this was good, that it was freedom—the gasoline would flow like a river forever,  greed is good, developing nations are America's garbage heap, and your ability to consume is more important than the lives of billions. And if anyone questioned you, if anyone proposed a more just, equitable, or meaningful vision of the future, you called them a “commie."

I mean, for fuck sake, you all elected George W. Bush--twice.

And now that it’s time to pay the piper, now that the unsustainability of the world you created is clear and the rest of us will suffer for your sins (right before you finally do us all a favor and check out), you want to talk about how hard it was for you to wash diapers?
   
You don’t like “green” bags? You don’t like being old? Still mad they canceled Matlock? Tough shit. 

You’re lucky we don’t line you all up against the wall.

Sincerely,
Young People


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