It’s hard for senior citizens to keep up with the latest in environmental catastrophes, much less the ever-changing rules about what’s “green,” what’s “unclean” and what’s “in-between.” They’ve been busy despoiling the earth while they accumulated the worldly goods needed to enjoy their “golden years,” which is why Your Senior Green Advisor is here!
Dear Senior Green Advisor:
I am writing from the lounge at the Middlesex Senior Center on Route 135, I had to get out of the house after what happened. My son’s girlfriend Charletta (the one with the ring in her nose, not the one he was dating senior year in high school), just lit into me because I have plastic-stemmed cotton swabs. (N.B.: They are staying here because they can’t afford an apartment but I do NOT let them sleep together.) She came out of the bathroom all red in the face and screamed at me because there’s some “meme” whatever that is on the World Wide Web about a seahorse and a plastic swab.
The reason I came down to the Senior Center is they have a nice aquarium that is very soothing and restful to look at while I wonder whether I will be able to stretch my Social Security check to the end of the month since my late husband was an independent sales rep with no pension plan. Anyway, there is a little seahorse in the tank, he is very cute, but I notice he doesn’t have ears. Why would a seahorse need a “Q-Tip” if that’s the case?
Thank you,
Lynette Fletcher, Natick, Mass.
Dear Lynette:
I believe what Charletta is talking about is the enormous amount of plastic waste that we throw in the ocean every day, not the personal hygiene of the seahorse. Perhaps you two can find some common ground if you remember the sage old medical advice “Never put anything in your ear but your elbow, and never put a ring in your nose unless you’re a bull.”
Dear Senior Green Advisor:
My 34-year-old daughter Tina is unemployed again, her third job in two years. She says she has been “furloughed” but I don’t believe it. Every day when I open up the Tri-County Penny Saver I see plenty of job openings but when I try to show her she goes “Duh, nobody reads the papers anymore, everything is on-line.”
Despite her attitude I try to keep her healthy and so bought her some yogurt instead of the lunch meat and ketchup sandwiches she wolfs down. I should mention, Tina got caught up in the “grunge” movement that swept America in the 90s and has never gotten over it. When she saw the containers of Yoplait Twisted Strawberry Mango Tango in the refrigerator she went ballistic on me, saying don’t you know this is the yogurt that skunks get trapped in and die a horrible death?
Ms. Senior Green Advisor, how was I supposed to know that something as tasty and delicious as fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt could be a death trap for a skunk, and why should I care about skunks anyway–they stink! I don’t know what is with kids these days, you try to do something nice for them and you get nothing but back-talk.
Eunice Alpharasian, Keokuk, Iowa
WARNING: The Surgeon General has determined that it may be hard to get your head out of this container.
Dear Ms. Alpharasian:
Thanks to the efforts of environmental fanatics Yoplait yogurt now comes in “skunk-safe” containers, with wide openings that our stinky little friends can easily get into as well as out of. You might drop a hint to “Tina” that she should follow the skunk’s example and get “out of” your home and “into” a place of her own if she wants to get married before she dies.
Hey Senior Green Advisor–
Long-time reader, first time writer. I notice that a lot of the expensive “craft beers” like blueberry IPA and Belgian wheat lagers no longer come with the traditional six-pack plastic rings, instead they’re sold in 4-packs attached by like plastic lids on top. I think it’s bad enough that the “millennial” brewers are not only trying to reduce the amount of beer I drink, but they also charge the same or even more than your good old-fashioned watery beers Americans have loved for so long.
When I made a crack about this to the check-out girl at Cannon’s Expensive Craft Liquors–which I normally wouldn’t go to but it was on my way home from bowling–she said it’s because turtles and squirrels and other animals get stuck in the six-pack “yokes” and grow up deformed.
Ms. Senior Green Advisor, I couldn’t resist, I made a crack about maybe the critters shouldn’t be so stupid, and the girls says I am now “banned” from Cannon’s for thirty days and have to undergo sensitivity training before they’ll let me come back. “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’ll take my business to a place that cares more about humans than animals.” Just curious, have you heard from any like-minded drinkers who will join the fight to keep six beers in every six-pack instead of four?
Bill Archstrong, Traverse City, Michigan
Dear Bill–
I’m not sure how to explain this to you except by a story about Yogi Berra, who was once asked whether he wanted his pizza cut in six or eight slices. “Six,” he said, “I can’t eat eight.” With a four-pack of sixteen-ounce cans or bottles you get 64 ounces; with a six-pack of twelve-ouncers you get 72 ounces. Buy one twelve-ounce can or bottle from the “loose beer” bin in the walk-in cooler, and you’ll have an additional four ounces of alcohol to impair your math skills!