Balloons don't suck, but they blow

My God, I am so glad I am not the only one who hates this horrible, disgusting practice! It is ubiquitous for all sorts of occasions, happy or sad, weddings and funerals and christenings and divorces and this and that, and apparently not one person considers the consequences, or else they'd stop it. For some reason most people don't even think about where all that latex goes, or just sort of assume it dissipates into the air and disappears. If we can't see it, it can't be there, and certainly couldn't be doing any harm.

I'd like to know the stats on how often this is done every day worldwide, and how many TONS of filthy shredded latex end up casually discarded in the environment, the air and the water and the forest and city streets, along with countless masses of those nice curly lengths of ribbon that can choke magnificent marine life to death. Slowly.

Aside from all the animals it kills, balloon releases are kind of like firing tons of used condoms into the air and somehow seeing nothing wrong with the practice, even viewing it as something so beautiful and meaningful that other concerns are trivial and unimportant. Yet if you say anything about it, you get hurt or astonished looks from people, as if you've said, "I like to stomp on Easter chicks". 

And just try NOT attending a balloon release in protest. Whether you explain it to people or not, it will be extremely awkward, the kind of thing that prompts a down-inflected "oh," while you honestly wonder if they think you're just an antisocial crank. "Oh come on, we know you don't like it, but they're going to do it anyway, you know? Be a good sport."

Everyone loves balloon releases, don't they? They're a way for people to express their deepest emotions. To "let go and let God". And for heaven's sake, they can't be harmful or they wouldn't sell them. (You're not one of those whackjob environmentalists, are you?) There it is right on the package: biodegradable.

Alternatives to the colorful aerial spectacle, whatever they might be, aren't given much play because nobody has really thought about it. It hasn't occurred to them they could do something else. Why should we, when we can go down to the dollar store and have them fire up the helium tank? It's what we always do, we do it every year, the kids would be disappointed if we blah blah blah, and anyway it hasn't done a bit of harm. 

Has it?

What's behind this bizarre and extremely selfish practice is something so naive that I can barely wrap my mind around it. People still seem to think God lives "up there", and that these overinflated multicolored condoms are somehow going to carry everyone's grief and hope and joy STRAIGHT UP TO GOD, where it will of course be dissipated into pure light by the power of divine grace. Soggy multicolored condoms raining down from the sky don't even enter the picture. So it's worth "whatever", isn't it, all that stuff you're so bothered about? It's a spiritual practice, for heaven's sake, and God wouldn't mind if we do it just this once.

https://balloonsblow.org/

We didn't do the green thing back then

(This is the sort of pass-it-around thing I don't usually like, but the more of it you read the more light bulbs come on.)

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days." The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day. 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 truly 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 schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) 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.

We walked upstairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throwaway 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. But that young lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

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 (remember them?), 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 she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then. We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.

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. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But 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?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart-ass young person.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm