Eleanor Tatum

The first national Earth Day occurred during my first year as a public school teacher. Stop counting; I’ll tell you. It was 1970. Yes, I started young.

For forty years I religiously taught the trilogy: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. I still practice the faith. I bring cloth bags to the market, I turn off lights and I used to have a compost heap. There’s another blog post concerning the “used to”.

Now I’m a grandmother; so grand I allow the gray to show in my crown. The first year of my reign I discovered the joys of Babies and Toys R Us (we need a backward R). No, this is not an advertisement. I marvel at the variety of educational entertainment. My inner child nearly sings as I skip up and down the aisles. I’ve been warned to walk, however.

Then disaster: (drama) I read the price, the directions, the warnings,  and the “Made In”.

Questions: will this gift teach my granddaughter anything worth while? Will she learn to read Latin or calculate angles?  Will my purchase assist my country’s economy or China’s or Ecuador? Most importantly, how many centuries will it sit in a landfill? Everything in that place is plastic! I panic.

She’s eleven months old. The empty cardboard box brought her great joy.

Enough.