Environmentalism has its roots in millions of violently angry Soviet women

What triggered this post was that today on Facebook, I saw a friend who is a mom-to-be discuss the benefits of  cloth diapers in an excruciating wall post that at least three moms responded to enthusiastically.  And seeing people on the Metro with their trendy non-bag shopping totes.   And watching people walk to work with a glow of pride.

Here’s what makes me angry.  My mom and pretty much all the women of her generation going back to Cyrill and Methodius’s moms also used cloth wash-diapers.  Except they were called pelyonki and essentially made out of sheets, because there were no real disposable diapers in the Soviet Union.  I know this because every week or so I am regaled with tales of how my mom washed the pelyonki in the bathtub (no washing machine until 1989, also due to the Miracle of Communism) and, as soon as she had, she had to wash them again, because, well, duh, I was a baby with as much bladder control as Fergie.  Now that’s environmentally friendly.

Thousands of hours of her life spent washing and boiling these cursed peloynki when she could have been doing other valuable things with her time, like watching _Real Housewives of Sevastopo_l.  And now these environmentalist moms are all like, “Oh, I want to wash the diapers!  It’s so cool! It’s friendly for the baby!” No. There is a reason God invented Pampers, and it is not having to hear stories about how I had no bladder control at 8 months and my mother cursing the day I was born.

Another thing.  The recyclable shopping bags.  Yes, yes, the Earth is dying with a slow wheeze and you personally can save it by buying a trendy grocery store bag from Whole Foods for $17.99.  Look how cool and earth-conscious you look with your cool graphic design bag on the Metro.    We had even cooler ones back in the day, and they looked like this:

The even cooler part was when you had to drag about nine of ten of these bad boys back to your house from 2 miles away after a day of standing in line for products that didn’t exist because…

you didn’t have a car!  Just like the dream of all Americans, most Soviet citizens (with the exception of Mr. B’s suspiciously bougeoisie family) did NOT have cars. The waiting line to get one was about 10 years.  I remember when I was four, it was about a seven year wait for our family and I discussed excitedly with my dad what color car we would have when I was 10.  Hence walking everywhere.  It was ridiculously clean and environmentally friendly, but also felt like the Death March of Bataan, probably even more so to my mom who had to lug around not only all of the shopping, but fatty me. (That bow alone probably weighed 2 kilo.)

People of America and the United People’s Repulic of Bethesda: stop the environmentalist hipsterism.  It can only lead us right back to communism.  And if you want to know what that was like, ask my mom and Mr. B’s mom, ten times a week.