Wanderings Of An Ambulant Plastic Bag
Nostalgia is a Fickle Thing
The other day I was driving along the road and an empty plastic bag blew across the street in front of me, from the gas station on the right to the drugstore on the left. A banned plastic bag! It was one of those pale green, translucent ones with handles like tentacles groping its way across the intersection. Its shuffling sound dealt me a Deja-vu moment.
Should I speed up, swerve, or slow down to avoid it trapping itself in my wheels, then to my undercarriage, making pedestrians turn and stare at the driver dragging a flapping plastic bag with them?
I sped up recalling the nuisance plastic bags were — once the trash pimps of civilization. Indestructructable facilitators of utility turned rare, sought-after relics @ $1-a-bag.
It skirted my tires, ducked under my rear bumper, and continued pirouetting to the other side.
Phew.
I watched in my review mirror as it tumbled on its way wondering whether the wind would abandon it at day’s end to a grubby corner. Or would it continue its vagabonding; jaywalking with rats, snagging on posts, and wrapping itself around legs until the good samaritan grandma who speaks only Mandarin, pries it away from a fence and puts it in her Hefty trash bag.
And then god forbid, it escapes her untied bag to continue over a pothole, around a tossed pizza slice, passed a celibate weed enjoying a ridiculously tiny crack in the sidewalk into the unspoiled yonder, where further fueled by the wind, it may find its way to the sea and trick a turtle.
Alternatively, it may drift up into space and orbit the planet with the ISS as a poignant reminder of our greedy, littering selves in contrast to our interstellar aspirations.
I think I need a vacation.
