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I asked for paper bags at the grocery store last week. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, an impulse buy, certainly nothing I had planned in advance. Generally speaking, I find that my green intentions outflank my actual green activity by a dismally consistent margin anyway, even in a community that’s taken years to successfully find a consensus on this crazy “town-wide recycling” idea. A few years ago I was roundly (and rightfully) mocked by a friend for chucking a plastic bottle into a trash can that was literally ADJACENT TO a recycling bin. It was a silly mistake, sure, but in my defense the nuclear runoff in my water supply had rendered me partly blind.
The point being, I chose paper less as a well-defined environmental stand and more because ... well, because it seemed like a nice thing to do. And yet, when the cashier asked if plastic was OK and I replied, “Actually, can I get paper?” she and the bagger both froze solid, stopped what they were doing and stared at me as though I just produced a live turkey out of my mouth.
The rest of our brief interaction unfolded with a transparent, uncomfortable awkwardness, the kind that you feel when you’re stuck in an elevator with an ex or when you’re Brett Favre. I’m not kidding when I say that these two individuals, who I’m sure are fine people and are good at their jobs, neglected to make eye contact with me for the next FOUR MINUTES, which was the length of time it took them to bag my stuff, which I know because I pretended to mess with my phone the whole time because I cannot stand awkward silences. It was transparent deflection, I know, but in my defense, I got a 61-point iPhone Scrabble word, so win-win.
I also found during that four minutes that I became an aggressive environmentalist with a sudden desire to organize a march and start figuring out ways to power my car with bacon grease and optimism. It’s not like I asked them to join me for an afternoon of toothbrush-scrubbing oil off of abandoned seal pups; I asked them to not enshrine each of my groceries in its own individual baggie, which I think we can agree was not a terribly unreasonable request.
With my moral indignation officially tuned, I started noticing this pattern happening elsewhere. I bought my son a shirt at a Large Retailer last week, and they put it in a bag with which I could have conceivably backpacked around Australia for about three months, so that the shirt didn’t, I don’t know, burst into flames on the walk to the parking lot? The late great comedian Mitch Hedberg noted that Pepperidge Farm bread is wrapped twice: “You open it, and then it still ain’t open. That’s why I don’t buy it. I don’t need another step between me and toast.” True story: On that same grocery trip the cashier asked if it was OK to put my milk in a plastic bag, and I replied, “That’s OK, I’ll just take it,” and she LOOKED RIGHT AT ME AND PUT MY MILK IN A PLASTIC BAG, which I meekly took without a word, because when it comes right down to it I’m easily intimidated.
All of this means two things: that I spend entirely too much time ruminating on my trips to the grocery store, but also that business appears to harbor an irrational reliance on the plastic bag, as though the entire thing is funded by a huge silent lobby. I know we’re all wrapped up in health care and financial regulation, but I believe we in Hilton Head need to sound the immediate call for Plastic Bag reform. Obviously, I’ll bring the milk.
Jeff Vrabel is the editor-in-chief of Monthly. E-mail him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
