The Nose Knows

Rick blew his nose on the last of the extant kleenex this morning, and we are turning to alternatives that do not come in cardboard boxes with a mouth of plastic film.

We are becoming throwbacks, each to a different time period. I myself have opted to swab my sniffer with a cotton hankie, as though it were the nineteenth century. Rick has another approach. For decades he has made a habit of squirreling away all the restaurant and fast-food napkins that come his way. Not that he pockets extras for his personal use -- but, barring a barbecue-sauce disaster, he figures the paper serviette that accompanies his food is good for another mouth-wipe or two. He stashes these in his backpack and then, when he gets home, into a paper bag, and dips into these for a variety of uses. I know -- it's a weird old bachelor miser habit. It makes Rick look some Depression-era survivor. He maintains he learned it as a young man from one dear departed Reverend Emmet Johnson, who no doubt was a child in the 30s. Turns out that the greenest 21st-century practices look a lot like the use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without ethic of generations past.