Blurbex

Good news everyone: You can rest easy, as I have taken one for the team and stopped global warming in its atmosphere-choking tracks. For the first time since I purchased them almost two months ago, I remembered to bring my reusable cloth grocery bags to the store. Please, hold your applause until the end.

(Photo Credit: Heidi K.)

Back when we at CL were prepping our Green Issue, which detailed “100 was to go green right now,” I pitched Bite the bullet and get reusable grocery bags as one of my ideas. Deep thinking, I know. Editor D-dub liked the idea and it made the issue at #21 with a bullet (hopefully produced from recycled metal).

I thought it a bit hypocritical to suggest you buy cloth grocery bags without buying them myself, so in early April my girlfriend and I purchased three bags for $.99 each from our neighborhood Publix. Beaming with the pride of new parents, we brought our bags to the checkout aisle where the clerk noticed that my girlfriend and I were planning to save the world. “Lots of people buying them?” I asked. The clerk said she saw her fair share. “But will three bags be enough to hold what would normally take 10 to 12 plastic bags?” I asked the bagger. He gave me a sly grin, letting me know he took the query as a challenge to his still-burgeoning manhood.

A grocery-bag-Tetris savant, this kid squeezed the cereal box next to the organic half-and-half bracing the boneless chicken breast adjacent the ice cream below the eggs. The items were so tightly packed that one bag shredded along the seam and I had to run and get a replacement.

In the end everything fit, leaving me impressed and self-satisfied. The girlfriend and I drove our selections home, beaming at our contribution to saving the earth. The groceries unpacked, we stowed the bags in a closet by the front door, where they would sit in anticipation of our next grocery run.

And sit they did. Funny thing about saving the world: after the initial surge of civic pride, it pretty much slipped my mind. On my next trip to Publix, I only remembered that reusable bags existed as I was pushing my loaded cart toward the checkout line and encountered them hanging from a sales rack . I’ll remember next time, I thought.

But I didn’t. Or the time after that. After six or seven trips to Publix, the bags became a joke. Hey honey, guess what we forgot? or It’s a good thing we’re so stupid, because if we actually remembered to bring the bags we’d have nothing to pick up the dog’s shit with.

On a trip two weeks ago, I told the cashier that we owned three reusable bags but could never remember to bring them to the store. The clerk laughed and said not to worry, most people forget them in the car. Jesus, some people are fuckin’ stupid.

Last week, I finally remember to bring the bags to Publix — but forgot them in the car! I swore that next time we’d remember the bags.

And thank God for my girlfriend, because last night we were halfway between the apartment and the car when she remembered. I ran back in and grabbed two from the closet (it was a light shopping night), and we proceeded to Publix content in the knowledge that we were doing our part to save planet.

You can thank me later, polar bears.

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