Letters from the Elders

Dear Humans,

One word: plastics.

I won’t withhold everything I’ve learned. I’ll tell you plain. You will miss plastics.

I wish that, when people called it Cling Film instead of Saran Wrap, I’d have just let it go. It was a regional thing, not worth losing my long friendship with Mary over it.

Everything was plastic. We thought it was hygienic. We put it in our eyes so we could see better. We put plastic earbuds in our ears so we could listen ourselves out of any situation. We’d take food that was half-plastic in plastic containers, put it into another plastic container, heat it in an electric box of metal and plastic, and serve it to ourselves, guests, and families.

We’d coat each strand of our hair in plastic spray. We covered our houses, our cars, ourselves, in plastic. Every medicine, every little pill and dose had its own little plastic compartment. We stocked the reservoirs with plastic leeches which leached plastic into the water supply, so we shipped new water out to everyone in tiny plastic bottles.

The ocean was like a toddler’s bathtub, plastic toys and junk everywhere, crowding out the kid, poisoning every sea. It got so even sea salt was part plastic.

But you know all about that.

We thought we were throwing it “away” until “away” threw itself back at us. This was our near-destruction, and it was well-deserved. We served it first. Some people like to point fingers but I’d like to point out that our fingers are basically plastic.

You’d press your plastic keyboard buttons all day so hard and fast the letters wore off, absorbed by your fingertips. Invisible tattoos like CRAZE and PLUM replaced your fingerprints. Babies came out with flexible plastic fingernails that fell off and grew back “natural.”

If you want to know what we all could have done differently to prevent the situation we’re in now, I have one word for you: everything.

Peace,

Ned “the relatively well-liked former mayor of the town formerly known as Peterborough, NH” Grimley-Groves