Dad: (preparing to pay for merchandise) I’ll just take this in the bag I brought in…

Male worker continues to ring him up.

Female Worker: That bag? I threw it away already.

Dad: (peevishly) I brought it back because I wanted to use it.

Male worker continues to ring him up.

Female Worker: (now peeved) I’ll go get it. (goes into the back and reemerges with a crinkled up old jcrew bag.)

Dad: There was some white tissue with that, too.

Female Worker: I threw that away too! (goes into the back to retrieve it).

Dad: (trying to sound ironic rather than angry) You guys have an obsession with throwing things away here, huh?

Female Worker: (reemerging from the back with a nasty-ass, torn strip of old white tissue paper, her petite frame reverberating with loathing) More like “cleaning up”! (smile smile!)

She then starts wrapping up his new merchandise in the torn up tissue. The male employee has yet to speak. he continues to ring the dad up. The tension results in silence for the rest of the transaction.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Yes, I use my old bags, too. And not just at the grocery store. At jcrew, and BCBG, and other nice stores where people think you’re creepy for saying things like “Oh, I’ll just stick it in my purse and save a bag”. People probably even talk about me as the “crazy soccer mom” on their very own blogs. But seriously: the tissue? The old, nasty, torn up, “who gives a crap anyway b/c that tissue, in the grand scheme of the environment, is not what is the problem” tissue? I mean, if you’re so concerned about the tissue, why the hell are you even buying new clothes at all? They were clearly adult sized, Mr. Stay-At-Home. They were not for growing children who might actually need new clothes. What, you don’t have sufficient clothing to cover your body? You have to buy the new, trendy corduroys? Do you know how many of the earth’s resources, not to mention the blood and sweat of Italian mill workers, were spent in the manufacture and shipping of those pants? If you really cared, you’d buy some hemp by the yard and make your own pants, Stay-At-Home Dad!

And could you let me know when you do, b/c I would like to buy some carbon credits off of you so that I can buy another pair of those cute gallery pants without feeling guilty myself…