I have nothing against the environment. I wish it only the best. Clean air, stable weather, the occasional bird that knows when to be quiet. What I object to—strenuously—is the assumption that I must now conduct my grocery shopping with a sack that appears to have been sewn from regret and stored in the trunk of my car since the previous administration. Reusable grocery bags have become less a tool and more a moral interrogation.
Once, a bag was given to you. Freely. Casually. It asked nothing in return. Now I am expected to present my own, like a peasant offering tribute. I never remember them, of course, which leads to the public shaming ritual at checkout. The cashier pauses. The line waits. Somewhere, a teenager sighs. I am asked, gently but pointedly, whether I “brought my bags today.” I did not. I never do. And yet I continue to believe I might.
When I do manage to locate these bags—usually after wrestling them from beneath a spare tire—they are never appropriate. One is too small, one is inexplicably long, and one contains crumbs from a past life. They collapse without warning, dumping oranges onto the floor like an agricultural protest. Plastic bags, for all their sins, knew how to hold things. These modern cloth contraptions are emotionally supportive at best.
Of course, I fully support the concept. I nod vigorously when told about waste reduction. I applaud silently while paying the nickel surcharge with the air of a man funding a cathedral. And yet I resent every second of it. This contradiction troubles me deeply, though not enough to change my behavior. I will continue forgetting the bags while believing myself virtuous in theory, which is the most efficient form of virtue available.
If progress demands I lug groceries home in sacks advertising yoga studios and defunct radio stations, then so be it. I will comply, badly. I will drop jars. I will block aisles. I will age visibly at the register. And one day—perhaps—I will remember the bags. But not today. Today, I pay the nickel and leave with my dignity partially composted.
