Tank Grrl – Your mother wouldn't approve

A Rant in response to ‘Anyone over 35 should read this’

// January 17th, 2012 // Uncategorized

In reply to that ‘Anyone over 35 should read this’ that’s going around, I’m over 35. Well over 35. So here’s my response in kind.

(Here’s a copy, though not the original, if you don’t know what I’m on about. http://gaasedal.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/anyone-over-the-age-of-35-should-read-this-as-i-copied-this-from-a-friends-status/ )

If I’d written (or re-written) the latter part, it’d go something like this:

Back then, we returned milk bottles, pop bottles and beer bottles to the store. OK. Milk came in a carton which we threw away and beer came in cans which we also threw away. Or maybe dad would shoot them on weekends with my uncles when they went out driving around. But the pop bottles were like manna form heaven. The store gave you a couple of cents for each and sent them back to the plant to be melted down and re-used, so it was almost the same bottles repeatedly. So they really were recycled. Glass is awesome. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day. We had the brown thing; double-bagged paper sacks at the A&P.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. And holy crap was it a pain in the ass if it was hot out. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. OK, that’s not true. We only walked to the grocery store when we were kids. Since the grocery store was in the center of town, as adults or teens, we got in the car. Our car got 12 miles to the gallon and had around 180-horsepower. Sometimes we would drive the car down to drop off those heavy ass bottles since there was no such thing as a recycling bin and collective pick-up.

Back then, we washed the baby’s nappies because we weren’t rich. We didn’t have the throw-away kind, but they existed. We dried clothes on a line, until we got an electric dryer and our clothes were no longer stiff or dirty because it’s rained for three days and you can’t hang shit out in the rain. That dryer lasted for like 15 years. No lie. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, again because we weren’t rich, not because we were noble. We didn’t have the green thing back in our day. We had the blue thing — those blue iron on patches for the knees of your jeans. We’d drive to the next town to buy them at the department store, but, hey, gas was like $0.50 a gallon so who gave a shit, right?

Back then, we had one TV in the living room and one in the big bedroom. Just like normal people did and still do. And one of the TVs was B&W because, did I mention we weren’t rich? Man that sucked. Because Star Trek was IN COLOR! And mom is hogging the color TV. In the kitchen, mom worked her ass off in the heat and used a blender because what is this, the freaking stone age? By hand? How old are you? Even my grandma had an electric blender. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, just like I did the last time I sold something on eBay. You know, eBay, where we recycle used goods instead of letting them rot in the basement or throwing them out. How ya’ like, THEM apples, old man?

Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We fired it up to cut the lawn, trim the hedge, pump the basement, and cut down trees. Push mowers went out of style in the 40s, cut the grass poorly and required repeated sharpening just to make them feasible. They sucked. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. Or maybe we belonged to a golf club, or the YMCA or any number of other things. Because standing behind the soda fountain at the local Rexall isn’t exactly back-breaking. But he’s right. We didn’t have the green thing back then. We had the red thing. Skin cancer from being outside all goddamned day mowing the lawn.

We drank from a water fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. And the blacks drank from theirs. Because racism and segregation was still in full swing, despite what the law might say. No wait, that fountain is in Old Man Wisenheimer’s fantasy. We used a glass. Or a ‘tumbler’. But he’s right. The plastic bottle thing is out of hand. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen.And holy shit was that hard and messy. Thankfully, Bic saved us from that nightmare. We replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. Uh… just like people do now. But we didn’t have the green thing back then. I mean those green strips that make shaving so much nicer. I haven’t nicked a kneecap in years.

Back then, people took the bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mums into a 24-hour taxi service. Because every… wait. Kids still ride their bikes and the fucking bus. Jeez, old man. Don’t get carried away.

We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And they weren’t grounded. And every year some house burned down at Christmas form too many lights on one circuit. Thank god we got over that nonsense and established wiring standards. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint. Because there wasn’t one. It was in the next town too and we’d drive there in our gas guzzling V8.

Please post this on your Facebook profile so that other deluded old person who needs a lesson in perspective from a smarty-pants old person can see this. (I don’t really expect you to. It just felt good to say that.)

EDIT: PS – I live in The Future, thanks very much, and it’s fucking awesome.