Near my house is a small market where I buy food. They have a good produce selection and reasonable prices. Its owned and operated by an Arab family and it looks a little dowdy, which is a plus because its never really crowded and I can't understand the other shoppers, so they don't annoy me with their conversations. My only qualm is that they obsessively give me plastic bags. Produce, that is already bagged, gets two more layers of plastic baggery and if an item meets a little resistance on its way in the bag, it just gets its own new double bag. For every one item that I buy, I come away with three plastic bags. At first I did the "life gives you lemons/lemonade," thing and tried to use them as trash bags, but I honestly didn't have that much trash, not to mention the huge tears they tend to get on the short trip home. Suddenly I am surrounded with these wispy ghosts of purchases past floating around the house. They have no heft, so they can't even be hung by their own weight from a doorknob. I fucking hate them.Fed up, I invested in a set of hippy canvas cloth flour sack looking things for my produce and those stretchy fishnet shopping bags to put it all in. In hindsight this was sort of a waste of money. I could have used an old pillow case if I wanted, the only reason to use the fishnet shopping bag would be to transmit my values to other shoppers. Let me tell you, the line at the super market is not the forum for an ecological, world changing demonstration. Taking - EVEN ONE EXTRA SECOND, would summon the grouchiest, grumpy demons from the shortest queue and the single guys buying nachos and old ladies would start their less than subtle eye rolls and "C'mons....". Sometimes I would be too slow to correct and the well honed bagger would be packing and double bagging my stuff before I could even utter a word. Experience has taught me that if this happens, let them finish. The mental routine of the checkout does not include conscious thought and snapping them out of the trance of bagging groceries and counting money never goes well.
I still use the hippy flour sacks to bag my produce and the Arab market family actually really like them. Where ever they are from, it is how they would carry food home and they like mine because they have a little string which adds a few extra cents to my purchases. The opposite is true at the big super market. I get sneers and raised eyebrows from everyone. They hate the opaque bags because they have to fish through to get the SKU numbers, so I rarely buy fruit from them or I limit it to lettuce and stuff that doesn't need bagging. I gave up on the fishnet shopping bags.They didn't stand up to my dense melon and carton of milk combos. Besides, I was always afraid to buy something small that might fall out. Now I use a great big courier bag which is so big one could convey a sink with it. The act of putting this impressive bag at the end of the convey er eliminates all doubt whether I want paper or plastic. It's does all the talking and it says, "NEITHER FUCKFACE, I BAG MY OWN SHIT!"
