Ronnie Cohen is a California liberal who raised her son to be environmentally-conscious, and she has been paying the price.
My son, Cory, will leave our Northern California home to start college back East in the fall, prompting other mothers to offer condolences about my soon-to-be-empty nest. Though they expect me to break into tears, my overriding emotion when my youngest departs will be relief. I will finally be freed from the constant scrutiny of the ever-vigilant eco-warrior I raised.
I can do nothing right in my teenage son’s eyes. He grills me about the distance traveled of each piece of fruit and every vegetable I purchase. He interrogates me about the provenance of all the meat, poultry, and fish I serve. He questions my every move—from how I choose a car (why not electric?) and a couch (why synthetic fill?) to how I tend the garden (why waste water on flowers?)—an unremitting interrogation of my impact on our desecrated environment. While other parents hide alcohol and pharmaceuticals from their teens, I hide plastic containers and paper towels.
I feel like I’ve become the adolescent, sneaking around to avoid my offspring’s scrutiny and lectures. Only when Cory leaves the house do I dare clean the refrigerator of foul-smelling evidence of my careless waste—wilted greens, rotten avocados, moldy leftovers. When he goes out to dinner, I smuggle in a piece of halibut or sturgeon, fish the stocks of which, he tells me, are dangerously depleted. Even worse, I sometimes prepare beef—a drain on precious water, my son assures me, and a heavy contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions.
What a relief I will feel to be out from under the fiery gaze of my personal sustainability meter-reader!
Read the whole thing.
fjord
The ultimate irony is that after the eco-nazi graduates with $100,000 of debt and no job prospects, he’ll move into her basement and resume terrorism full time.
Just who is the parent here?
Parsons
I think maybe a stiff backhand and a few days without food (or maybe some eco-friendly grass that didn’t require shipment) would have improved this situation.
John
I guess it never occurred to her to teach him manners, respect for his elders, particularly his parents, or any other social grace. The irony here, I think, is that she is really proud of him, and bragging about him in print. We really need fewer of these snot-nosed, holier-than-thou, deluded eco nut cases.
gonewiththewind
When he graduates give him a skateboard.
Jacob's Step Stool
The problem being that there are thousands “Corys” out there all itching to get into the government so they can save the planet. Even if it means putting a few behind bars in order to do so.
Orcadrvr
It seems as if there is no father in this household.
I would have put up with this for about one minute. Probably would have taken him dirt bike riding in the desert, shooting, fishing, and maybe a football game, over a couple of months.
It would drive all these idiotic feminine notions out of his head for eternity.
Oh, and drag racing.
Dallas
A stout backhand across the spew hole generally fixes this kind of baloney
Lee
A) Great comments here!
B) Had to share the same post from Gay Patriot, because there are some really great comments over there, too. Here’s the link: http://www.gaypatriot.net/2015/09/13/lefty-sjw-wonders-why-her-special-snowflake-is-an-obnoxious-jerk/#more-74354
Mike M
He’s going to college “back East”?!?!?!
Oh, the irony…..and he plays the bonus shop local card. Well, monkey see, monkey do.
Dave
Moonbats raise moonbats.
Joe Y
I read this article several times in a row; if the author was capable of a bit of self-reflection–as those commenters who noted the absence of a father allude to–it would have been a terrific short story. It struck me as very Freudian: an intense mother-son bond, with the son both pulling away from the mother, hence his hostiilty, but simultaneously winning her love by becoming the perfect little enviro-friendly boy he had been raised to be. Really interesting, which to her credit as a writer.
the gold digger
My environmental activist mother in law was horrified when she came to my house and discovered she was expected to use a cloth napkin. For more than one meal.
We were not eating BBQ or fried chicken or anything that would get the hands dirty. It was just regular food. But she was offended.
She and my FIL, also a serious leftist environmentalist, were also offended that I
1. Dry clothes on the line instead of in the dryer
2. Wash ziplock bags and re-use them when possible.
If I were a liberal who was doing all this in the name of the environment, they might not have minded so much, but because I am not a leftist and because I do this because I come from German and Slovak heritage and by God, We Do Not Waste, it doesn’t count.
the gold digger
What I forgot to say is that my MIL and FIL use paper napkins like they are going out of style, get a trashcan full of catalog and junk mail every week (all you have to do is go to the catalog website or junk mail site and take yourself off the mailing list), and run their a/c all the time, even though there are many months in Florida when it would be perfectly fine to have the windows open.
I found one of my MIL stories about their week-long stay in our house. Never again.
http://diaryofagolddigger.blogspot.com/2010/03/in-which-doris-makes-apple-pie-and-i.html
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