History circles around again--does anyone notice?

The latest thing here in the greater D.C. area is that the city government just passed a law charging five cents "tax" for using a plastic bag. My response? First, don't shop in the city unless its critical, and second, make sure I always get something small enough to just carry out.

I remember as a child watching my grandmothers rummage through their huge purses for their net grocery bags. Heavy-duty macrame'd bags that collapsed down into nothing to store in a purse or pocket. One of my grandmothers had a large canvas bag she kept in the car. Honestly, we thought it was a little weird and old fashioned--what was next, us girls getting pretty wicker baskets to tote to market? Sorry--that's a little too Little Red Riding Hood or Little House on the Prairie for us. We just chuckled about how all these years after the Depression, they were still trapped in that mentality and never even realized that all the stores had paper bags readily available.

And then came the late 70s and 80s. The advent of that marvelous invention, the PLASTIC grocery bag. At first, they were too flimsy. "No one" would trust their groceries--especially eggs--to a plastic bag! What were people thinking??!! But, soon, sturdiness caught up with efficiency, and suddenly only evil tree killers were still using old fashioned PAPER bags! Ha! Billions of trees were dying for every bit of brown paper bag, while plastic bags were The Only Answer. They were 100% man made--no natural resources destroyed! Not only that, they were recyclable! Not only could you reuse them around the house for transporting wet swimsuits, lining the cat box, or whatever, when you were done with reusing them a few times, you could toss them in the recycler (soon to be standard everywhere) and they'd be melted down and reformed into brand new clean plastic bags...or toys!...or part of your new car!! Suddenly, doing kid craft projects like building puppets out of bags were passe, because no one wanted to be caught using a tree-wasting paper bag.

Now, plastic is evil--and not so recyclable as we were told twenty years ago--and apparently plastic bags are wandering off on their own to go on murderous sprees destroying local wildlife or something. So...its back to paper, or even better--bring your own canvas bag (complete with the 21st century twist--or we'll tax you more!). Huh. I think my grandmothers might be laughing at us right about now.