Exercise 1

My grandmaw does the craziest thing. She actually sews up the holes in her socks and underwear. I always questioned this, wondering why she didn’t just buy a new pair and throw the old ones out. I can’t help but laugh at the sight of my grandmother, seated on the couch with the TV on, huddled over a pair of socks with a hole in the toe. My mother is the same way, and I was always quick to throw away whatever socks or shirts I had torn so that she wouldn’t catch me and sew them up. Maybe it has to do with a generation gap; my grandmother grew up during the Great Depression, and no doubt raised my mother to be as frugal as she is.

I, on the other hand, am a child of the infamous “throwaway society,” eager to throw out the old to replace it with the bigger, newer model. I don’t see it as waste, the way my mother does; it’s just my way of fixing things. I can’t be bothered with sewing on buttons when it is so much easier to just replace the shirt. I throw out clothes that still have the tags on them, stuff I’ve never even worn, and I don’t think twice about it.

I should be as thrifty as my mother, but I think I might have stopped paying attention to her money-saving hints when I actually begin to acquire money of my own. Never mind all of my mom’s coupons and bargain sales; I wanted name brands, the best that money could buy, so that it would look good when I threw it out four months later.