Paper or Plastic

Tonight the hubby and I made a trip to Wal Mart to do some random grocery shopping. After spending an hour in the store with a list of must-haves that turned into a suggestion sheet, we emerged with a buggy full of produce, boxes, bags and veggies all contained in plastic bags. We loaded the unstable bags into the MINI and headed home. Its cool out so we had the windows down and the flap flap flap of the plastic bags blowing in the back seat was annoying. We got home and hauled all the bags in. After unloading all the bags, I placed each newly emptied bag one inside the other with one looped around my wrist to hold them all. After smooshing them flat, I realized something , I miss paper bags.

As a young child, I remember Mama loading my brother and I into the old blue Nova and heading for Food World. It was shoppping day! We would push the cart down every isle filling the buggy up with a week or two worth of culinary goodness. We would check out and evey single thing was placed into a simple brown paper bag. The bags were loaded into the trunk and pack seat of the Nova and home we went. All the bags stood upright and straight, no flap flap flap in the wind. After we arrived home, always around 3:20, right after Daddy got home from work, all the bags would be taken into the kitchen and placed on the table. As the bags are emptied of their goodness they are all dropped onto the floor, awaiting the folding faze.

Speaking of the folding faze, after the bags were emptied and abandoned, I would sit on the floor and fold. It seemed like a hundred bags. It was probably 15 bags, but the folding faze usually followed a whine of, "Mmmmaaaaammmmaaaaaa, I folded last time, its Jims turn!" That got me no where so folding I did. I followed the folds already there and folded these brown paper bag into a small shape to be stored next to the dryer, for further use, like lining the garbage can or bird cage.

You cant get brown paper bags anymore, unless you ask extra nice and wink at the manager. I miss the paper ones, the memories of folding a hundred of 'em, and them standing on their own. Oh, well, we shouldnt use any of them anymore, we should bring our own "environmentally friendly cloth ones" Whatever, I just miss the cute bag boy saying, "paper or plastic, ma'am?"