Both kids came home from school yesterday with a flower pot. Inside was a seed from a scarlet runner bean, and it was in honour of Earth Day. They watched a movie about the Earth and talked about things they would do on Earth Day in order to help the planet. Well aren't we twee?!! One day per year, we get to care about the planet. Don't even mention to the little kiddies how we should be doing this shyte every day that we are blessed enough to breathe whatever clean air is left on this earth. Why aren't we drilling this into their heads every single day? Or better yet, leading by example?
All this week they've been encouraged to send them to school with a "litterless lunch". Litterless lunch sucks donkey balls! In our family, we don't watch much tv, we dry our clothes outside in fine weather, we eat nearly everything home made and grow a lot of our own food in the summer. We voluntarily walk to places we need to get to. It almost makes me puke every time I go near it, but we have a compost pile as well! We even have an all-consuming, manic passion for recycling. If one didn't notice how groomed our armpits are, one could actually accuse us of being "hippies"*.
To me, litterless lunch is a huge smack in the face. School lunches are about the only things in our house for which we use packaging, or single-sized servings of anything. Even then, only rarely do we do such things because our kids eat like fiends and need mass quantities. If I were to load them up with water bottles and storage containers every day for school, they'd need a separate backpack to hold organic carrots alone! Seriously!
As it was, all this week their backpacks were so heavy. I couldn't manage to jam the zippers shut on their lunch bags because their reusable containers take up too much room. I swear, the middle kid was unbalanced all the way to school in the morning. I kept having to shove him from behind when we were walking up hills so that he didn't topple over, roll down the hill and land in a sodden heap of sandwiches and orange juice at the bottom.
I've been hearing radio announcements all day suggesting things like, "Hey fat fuckers, today it's Earth Day, so how about you recycle that soda can instead of chucking it into the nearest garbage bin, only to have it stay there for several million years polluting the earth for the children you can't have since you've gone sterile from eating so many TV dinners?". They may have used slightly nicer language, but the same sentiment is there.
One day, one week, one month or a year even, is not enough. We should be doing this shit every single day that we are alive. We owe it to our children and other peoples' children, even if you're like me and don't like other peoples' children. Heh. Just kidding.
But not really, because they're bastards.
Our family is not perfect. Shocking, I know! We still have a great deal of room to improve. However, being more environmentally conscious is something that's very important to us. It should be important to everyone, quite frankly. I suggest that instead of having an Earth Day, how about we have an Earth Life? Devote your entire life, change your entire way of thinking and living, and just do little things like walking to the corner store, use cloth shopping bags, eat less meat, buy local produce from farmer's markets or grocery stores, shop once in a while at a thrift or consignment store, or reuse something several times before you recycle it. The list goes on, but other people are better at it, so here are some links:
Teach your children well.
That's all,
Twills
XOXO
*Twills is aware that there are many hippies that do not have hairy armpits and that stereotypes are wrong, even when they're funny.
