This post was inspired by a Fwd from my wingnut uncle, whose steady stream of fear and conspiracy mongering usually goes right into my trash bin. I’m not sure what made me look this time.

The email began with a story about an old woman who goes into a grocery store. She forgets to bring her shopping bag and apologizes to the clerk (“We didn’t have the ‘green’ thing back in my day”). The clerk nods sadly, or perhaps sanctimoniously. If only her generation had had the ‘green’ thing, he thinks, then maybe the human race wouldn’t be in this predicament.

The rest of the email is a rebuttal – a litany of ways in which the old woman’s generation was possibly greener than ours, and I found myself identifying with some of it…

I grew up wearing mostly second-hand clothes. Hand-me-downs from friends and relatives, and things bought at the church “rummage sale.” Even in my twenties – my starving artist years – most of my clothes were from the thrift store. Surely greener than what I wear these days.

We rode our bikes to school every day. No school bus, and definitely no ride in a fancy car. Also, we were a one-car family.

We had one small black-and-white TV set that was eventually replaced with an only slightly larger color set.  No computers of course. And no gadget chargers constantly eating power.

My mom dried our laundry on the line to keep the electric bill down.

We drank tap water.

We played outside mostly. Often without any toys at all. I can remember only one toy that required power – an electric race track.

Most things in our house, it seemed, were fixed a dozen times over, not thrown away and replaced with new things.

We were green then, though we didn’t know it. It certainly didn’t feel like a sacrifice.