For Myself Rather Than for the Earth hr669

 

I am stingy. I switch off the lights, turn off a faucet, and shut the refrigerator door as soon as I finish using them. I mend holey socks and replace loose elastic strings on pajama pants instead of buying new ones. Whether at home or at a restaurant, I never leave food on my plate. I finish drinks completely, too. People in Japan where I live tend to leave a small amount of drinks in a glass at a restaurant as if it were good manners. I strongly oppose it.

I assume my stinginess had been nurtured by my grandparents who raised me. They were super duper stingy for whom I can be no match. Basically our house was in darkness because they wouldn’t use electricity. Even at dinner time, we turned on the least necessary light for the table and ate our house-grown vegetables mainly. My grandparents were neither vegetarians nor poor. They were quite wealthy for that matter. They lived like that because they wanted to. Being thrifty was their principle.

My grandmother spent most of her day mending something. I don’t recollect that she ever bought new clothes. She was wearing old kimonos that she had kept patching or sewing up a rent for years. If one of her kimonos got to the state where it was too tattered to be worn, it transformed into dusters by her. She mended old futons to keep using, stitched up old towels to make them dust cloths, and washed used disposable plastic bowls of instant noodles to use them as pots for plants in the front yard. She never wasted anything and hardly threw away anything. The scary thing was, she was an amateur compared to her husband.

My grandfather was wearing old shoes with a hole and a worn-out jacket with drooping front pockets when he went out. At the department store, he would exclaim in a loud voice, “How expensive!” on every merchandise he saw, and go home without shopping for anything although he had plenty of money. He used to take me with him there when I was little and I hated to be with him as I was so embarrassed at his behavior. He sometimes ate out on his way home from an errand and often took leftovers home with him in a doggie bag. He would give it to me as if it had been a nice souvenir. Inside of the bag were always meager pieces of food, some of which were half bitten off. I was impressed by his courage to ask the server for a doggie bag to take this kind of leftover each time. I couldn’t figure out how it was possible that he wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed but proud of what he was doing. He just didn’t care what people thought about him or how he looked to them. He was confident in what he did and how he looked. His attitude appeared that his way was the right one and others’ were wrong. With that belief in his mind, he enjoyed his way immensely.

Lately, I feel that the times have been catching up with my stinginess. As companies and governments have promoted high-sounding agendas such as a sustainable society or an eco-friendly environment, more and more people are considering food loss and energy conservation. They are shopping by bringing their reusable eco bags and using old stuff instead of throwing them away. But I sense my way is slightly different from others. I am stingy not for public interest. It’s simply my natural way that I like to take. I may look embarrassing and laughable to others, but I would rather be true to myself. I don’t think it’s worth giving up our true selves by prioritizing how we look to others over what we really want to be. And I suppose my grandparents felt the same way. I have finally been made to realize that.

Hidemi’s Rambling No.540

My grandfather and I used to go to the department store together when I was a small child. He had a pass that entitled senior citizens to a free ride of the municipal streetcar. He usually said, “Not using the free pass is waste of money,” and tried to take the streetcar as much as he could although he had no place to go. As part of his useless effort, he often went to the department store where he didn’t have to go at all, and made me accompany him. While he didn’t have anything to buy, he strolled around all the floors. To get only one different floor he used the elevator that had an operating girl inside who would push the buttons and say the floor information, and the other girl outside who would close the outside iron door manually. It seemed he enjoyed the ride as a free attraction. His typical behavior was to ask a salesclerk the price whenever he spotted something expensive that he had no intention to buy, and to exclaim loudly, “How expensive!” He often looked into the costly merchandise that was on display in the glass case, asked the price, cried his ‘how expensive, and just walked on. When he was looking into the glass case of fountain pens intently one time, the salesclerk asked if he wanted her to take some pens out of the case and show them to him. He pointed out one by one and the clerk put them out on a sheet of velvet. He asked the price each time and at each answer he exclaimed, “How expensive!” “Outrageous!” “That much for a pen?”“Really, really expensive!” His loud remarks rang out through the quiet, elegant floor. After five or six pens were laid on the velvet, he just thanked the clerk casually and left the counter as if nothing happened. Even as a small child, I duly sensed his behavior was fundamentally embarrassing. That was why I hated to go out with him so much. In the lunchtime, he would order the most inexpensive noodle at the food-court-like restaurant on the top floor of the department store. He always ordered one dish for two of us and asked for an empty small bowl to divide the noodle into two. While I ate the smaller portion, he eagerly poured free tea, saying, ”Make your stomach full with free tea if that’s not enough!” We usually had a lot of free tea since we were hungry with only one noodle, and the huge kettle on our table went empty fast. The table was shared with eight people and each table had one kettle. He would start going around other tables for a full kettle. Many kettles were sometimes empty and he would go to the far end of the restaurant for free tea while checking the remaining content of every single kettle along the way. He would loudly say, “Those who pay for a drink are crazy when they have free tea!” right next to a customer who was drinking a glass of soda. In those cases, he would return to our table with a kettle in his hand as if he had hit a gold mine. Even a small child like me understood that his habit was extremely embarrassing and I really hated to go out with him. He did all of these things so happily by wearing tattered clothes and shoes with a hole, and he clearly enjoyed it immensely. I grew up and noticed there was a terrifying thing such as atavism. When I visit an outlet mall, I first go through price tags to see the percentage of discount, and if the percentage is big enough, start looking the merchandise itself. Last time, my partner asked me to quit that habit of mine. He wants me to look at the merchandise first, then the price tag. I don’t order a drink at the food court because it has a free water server. I also bring an empty plastic drink bottle from home and refill it with the free water for later breaks. “Those who pay for a drink are crazy when they have free water,” I usually murmur in my mind…