Saturday No Plastic Bags Day

My husband smiles in amusement at the manifestations of my latest peccadillo.

His mother asked him privately: "Why does she like to pick fights with strangers so much? She's nice and caring to us and friends and family, but why does she want to be so confrontational with strangers?"

I go shopping on Saturdays, which is so out-of-the-norm for one who shuns crowds, just so that I could say in my stage voice (conversational, non-confrontational in tone but not in content, pitched so that I would be heard from the back of the auditorium, but since I'm not, then, the whole supermarket or store could hear me even above the piped-in music and the babble of the crowds): "Isn't it Saturday, no-plastic-bags day? You should charge her RM1 for that!"

The cashier, or shopkeeper, or store manager, even a simple roadside trader or market stall owner would look at me, smile and shrug helplessly while the customer would have either one of two reactions - glare daggers at me and hustle off as quickly as they could. Or duck her head in embarrassment and scurry off as quickly as possible. Different emotions but the same exit, meaning: they all know about recycling and their civic duty but are too lazy, too forgetful or too indifferent and selfish to do their part. The human continuum and conundrum of what they know they should do and what they do do.

Then I add the "coup de grace" - this one addressed to everybody else within earshot: "If Penangites can do this so successfully, so can we here!" Once somebody took me to task over that bit of "slander and calumny", to which I sweetly replied: "Because I'm from Penang, I can say that we islanders are generally considered a miserly and self-centered lot, I can say that and not be slandering Penangites."

My verbal crusade started one Saturday evening when I made a quick stop at a nearby grocer to pick up one missing ingredient for my salad. I was affronted and outraged to note the mother of three at the cashier's counter just ahead of me tell her children to run to the vege and fruit section while the cashier was toting up the total. The children ran off and came back with those thin white plastic bags. You know the ones you tear off from a roll, provided for bagging vege or fruits that you've chosen, which you then take to the weighing station. They weigh it, seal it, print and stick the price tag on it.

The cashier and the packer were flabbergasted. To give them credit, they didn't help to pack the purchases into the ingenuously acquired bags. But neither did they make any attempt to remonstrate. But then again, they were foreign workers and maybe didn't have the vocabulary to address the situation.

Nothing, not even a gun held to my head, could have stopped me from bursting out: "Hey, what's the purpose of Saturday No Plastic Bags Day if you do that?" The mother was so embarrassed she grabbed the remaining unbagged items, shoved them into the various hands of her children and all four of them made an ignominious exit/escape from the loudly hectoring mad woman behind them.

I was still so righteously indignant (and still on a roll), I called out: "Where's the manager? You could still charge her RM1 for each plastic bag! If Penang can do this so successfully, so can we here in the Klang Valley. PJ can lead the way and especially this area, Tropicana. Are we barbarians or are we civilized?"

I looked around and saw half the customers were beaming and nodding at my "madness" while the other half were shaking their recycled shopping bags at me. A few surreptitiously picked up the recycled bags for sale at the head of every cashier counter and added it to their shopping!

When I related the incident to my husband, he laughed and asked me if I wasn't worried when I went to the carpark that somebody might not be waiting to bash me up. I told him that it so happened that my car was parked right in front of the doors. His shocked reaction: "What?! After that fanatic's outburst, you paid for your purchases, walk a few steps, got into your bright orange SLK and drove off? Everybody saw that? We need to get you an incognito car if you're going to be so nuts."