Few people look down on older people, thinking they don’t know anything and only younger people have all the knowledge.
But that’s where they are completely wrong.
Older people have more experience than younger people as they have lived through different periods. They definitely know everything better than young people. But sadly, young people sometimes look down on them.
The same happened with an older woman who was at a supermarket. She went to the cashier and the conversation that took place between the two has taken the Internet by storm. It has been shared on Facebook over 1.5 million times.
It all started when the cashier began packing the bags and asked the woman to bring her own bags to the store because “plastic bags aren’t good for the environment”.
The woman apologized saying, ‘We didn’t have this ‘green thing’ back in my earlier days.’
The cashier went on to say, ‘That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.’
Her response made the old lady surprised and angry at the same time. She then gave an explanation that is going viral on the Internet. The old lady said:
‘Back then, 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 recycled. But 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 school books. This was to ensure that public property was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But, too bad we didn’t do the “green thing” back then.’
‘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, not a screen the size of the state of Montana. 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. But you’re right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back then.’
The cashier tried to talk but the old lady didn’t let her speak. That’s when another cashier had opened a queue in another lane but the older woman continued:
‘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.’
‘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 in the family’s $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the “green thing”.’
‘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?’
The cashier was speechless. The old lady packed her goods and left the store. I am sure the cashier would not repeat this mistake of mocking older people again.