Environmentally frustrated

I was parking at the apple orchard today when the sun disappeared. It wasn't cloudy out but, nevertheless, it grew dark inside my car. I looked out my side windows and discovered I was in THE VALLEY OF THE SUV's. I was between some sort of Explorer and and some humongous Lincoln. I was scared, very scared.

Once, while getting out of my little car, the SUV next to me pulled out suddenly. If I hadn't ducked in time it would have been a scene from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre - only instead of a chainsaw ripping off my head it would have been a side-view mirror. Objects in the mirror Really Are closer than they appear.

You can probably tell from this and my SB Lesson #2 blog, that I am not a fan of cars the size of small towns. On my drive home from work on Friday I listened to how the greenhouse effect is worse than scientists predicted. I also pondered if the blood shed over oil wouldn't be as extensive if we just quit consuming so much.

After a peaceful afternoon among the Haralsons (not Woody, the apples) I pulled over into a gas station to fill the tank. There, on all the pumps were television screens. Above the computer screen that shows how much you are being ripped off there were television screens to show the latest ads and specials in little mini-commercials. The irony of it was, this was the station selling the E85 "good for the environment" clean gas. I guess we were saving so much by buying green that the gas stations felt they needed one more thing that used electricity on their pumps.

Sing with me now, "Green Acres we are there...da, dumb ,da-da, dumb...dumb, dumb."

SB lesson #2

Okay class, to continue educating you on the traits of a true SB (note: I did not say "typical" SB, there is no such thing as a typical SB), I need to tell you what happened today. The kids were getting into the car at the grocery store as I loaded the bags in the back when I noticed I was parked next to an SUV that was much larger than my apartment. Their motor was running even though the temperature was in the 70s and I'm almost sure it would have started again after the person they were waiting for came out of the store. But that wasn't really what got my SB engine started. Oh no.

I saw the drivers side window come down slightly and fingers pop through with some sort of wrapper that floated to the ground outside the behemoth auto. I could feel the kids start to fidget in the car as they knew I was not going to let it go. They probably flashed back on the time I tracked two neighborhood guys who dropped Taco Bell wrappers on our street and showed them how easily the bags would fit in the trash cans in their own back yard. Or another grocery store incident where the posh woman in the cashmere and pearls finished her free ice cream sample and threw the stick and wrapper on the ground not 2 feet from the friendly garbage can. She too learned how to "stop, drop and be droll."

So, as the boys cowered inside the car I jumped up about 6 feet in the air and knocked on the SUV window. The window came down as I picked up the wrapper and held it up to the middle-aged-and-should-damn-well-know-better driver inside. I said, "Come on, let's not do this. It's a beautiful world." And he...

Took the wrapper back.

I guess I'll never really know what happened to that wrapper, but I do know this, my sons know better than to toss their garbage on the ground, and that means an SB has done her job right.