I made a health decision a few weeks ago. Well, it wasn’t really a health decision, but it had some health consequences, I guess. It might be called an environmental decision, because there are certainly planetary benefits. But then again, it was more expediency than anything else. The past few weeks, I’ve been up most weekday mornings and out the door early and on foot.
“I’m off to walk the boys to school,” I’ve been announcing to my wife, these past few weeks.
You see, with our daughter newly arrived in town, her two boys have begun attending their new school. As she did at their former residence in the city, when her two older boys became school-age, our daughter has routinely been rising early, getting her boys ready for school, packing up the third child (who’s an infant) and walking her brood to and from school. When she broke her foot, soon after arriving here, however, I became the pinch-hitting guide to school. And, since the school is within walking distance, why not?
But each of these trips, I’ve become aware of a fascinating – if troubling – phenomenon. A lot of parents in this community drive their children to school. I know this because each morning the boys and I file past a motorcade of cars and trucks that stretches the equivalent of a town block in front of the school.
And while, yes, I’ve noted that some of those vehicles are farm designated (coming from some distance outside town), most of the two- or four-door buses are sedans, vans and SUVs – most of them transporting one parent and one child from a number of streets away.
But are the distances so great for those families that they all have to drive their kids every day? Or, are they so worried about their children’s safety that they feel bound to drive them door-to-door? And, has everybody in the most educated civilization in two millennia forgotten that the planet is choking from greenhouse gas emissions?
I think I can count the number of times I was driven to elementary or high school on the fingers of one hand. There was a cumbersome science project in Grade 5, I think. I got a ride home the Friday afternoon in Grade 9 I lost my two front teeth in a collision on the baseball diamond. And, I think the neighbours pooled the fanciest cars on the block to get all us grads to the prom fashionably.
Other than that, it was bikes, scooters and runners – rain or shine – and I’d add in neither grade school nor secondary school was our house located closer than a half dozen blocks away. A more innocent, less paranoiac time, I grant you.
But speaking of things environmental and yesteryear… The other day I read a story about a young cashier criticizing an older customer in a grocery check-out for requesting a plastic bag. The customer said she had forgotten to bring one of her reusable bags. To which the cashier replied: “Oh, I guess you didn’t have ‘the green thing’ back in the day.”
Excuse me. She didn’t have “the green thing”? If the cashier thought for a second, she might have considered the context of her remark. Any customer older than say 50 I’m sure can recall times when we actually returned pop, beer and milk bottles (not just jugs to be ground up and repurposed for a highway or something), to be returned to the plant, scrubbed clean, sanitized and refilled with soda, suds or pasteurized cow’s milk for resale at the same grocery or confectionary shelf.
And now that I think of it, I remember that most grocery stores packed our purchases in brown paper bags back then. You want to talk the origin of recycle? Those brown paper bags – once home – became book covers for some of our textbooks at school or favourite hard-covers at home. Or, they became heavy drawing paper, or the outer wrapper for mailed Christmas presents, or – torn into strips – the basis for our papier-mâché sculptures, and ultimately the paper lining for kitchen waste for the trip to the curb on garbage day.
I mean, “the green thing back in the day,” as the cashier called it, was when reduce, reuse and recycle were truly invented. Clearly, the cashier didn’t know her “green” history.
And how about the moms who washed and rewashed cloth diapers, before the world went supposedly disposable? Or, those who repaired utensils and even appliances versus tossing them into the landfill? “The green thing” is not a latter-day innovation, but a longstanding state of mind.
So, my grandsons and I have really gotten into the rhythm of walking to and from school. It gives us a chance to share stories, highs and lows of the day, and yes, it’s a healthier alternative for each of us. I know what you’re thinking: “But what about when it rains?”
“Umbrellas and rubber boots,” I’d suggest.
“And when it’s minus-25 in January?”
“OK, I may be a bit crazy. But I’m not stupid.”