Amigo’s Not So Friendly Plastic Shopping Bags

- Carola Matta

Plastic shopping bags, especially from the supermarkets, are a must have in my house. We use them for everything. Whenever my girl friends come over, for sleepovers and such, my mom always gives them a plastic shopping bag from Amigo for dirty laundry. When my family is invited to parties, we always carry our musical instruments in them during the “parranda” days of Christmas. Any refreshments taken along we bring in a plastic bag. Every weekend, when we go to our beach house in Luquillo, we pack the things we take with us in plastic shopping bags. A few days later, we return with the stuff that can rot in the fridge in the same bags. There are so many plastic shopping bags in my house that my mom always finds a use for the. When it’s raining outside and my sister and I can’t find an umbrella, my mom gives us a plastic shopping bag so we can protect our blow-dried hair from getting ruined. One time, when it was pouring rain outside, my parents were going to a wedding and my mom had on expensive new shoes from “La Favorita” which she did not want to ruin. She covered each foot with a plastic shopping bag until she got in the car.

The only chore that I am personally responsible for, the chore that has my name written on it (even though I also have to help around with the cleaning, the dishes and such) revolves around plastic bags. Whenever we come home from Amigo, our grocery store, I take the groceries to the kitchen and remove them from the plastic bags. I place all of the bags inside one bag and then put that one bag behind the kitchen trash can.

One time, there were so many bags filled up with other plastic bags that my mother told me to throw them away in the trash can outside; and so I did. Minutes after I threw the five to six bags full of other plastic bags in the outside trash, my dad came home from work and noticed how two Beagle puppies were choking from chewing the plastic bags. My dad suffers from back pain so I always step outside to check if he needs help carrying thongs inside. When I stepped outside, both puppies had died. I was infuriated with myself.

Our neighborhood is full of dogs with hungry looks on their faces. Every time I see one, I usually give them a slice of ham or meat, so they usually wonder around my front yard looking for food. That day, one of the plastic bags had a used turkey ham container in it. It’s what I believe attracted the puppies to our trash. All this time, I wanted to avoid that neglected dogs from our neighborhood starving to death. I was trying to be friendly and I ended up killing them with plastic bags as my weapon. From that moment on my little sister became the one in charge of putting away Amigo’s not so friendly plastic shopping bags.