Greenpeace guy yelled at me.

So in Washington last week, there were Greenpeace volunteers out recruiting. I have a lot of memberships, to groups like the Sierra Club, Center for the New American Dream, ACLU, Thoreau Society. I don’t have one for Greenpeace, though I did choose my current cell phone after reading their green electronics report (it’s a Nokia). When a nice guy was talking to us about issues, not far from the White House and a lot of Popos, we stopped to chat. We told him we’d likely get a family membership but that money is tight now with the job hunting. He was nice even after that. Yay Greenpeace.

Then later on, we’re walking toward the Smithsonian, and there are some Greenpeace volunteers parked outside of Wholefoods. Now, I’m gonna say it. The Wholefoods closest to my apartment is not somewhere you’re likely to find a lot (which is not to say no) environmentalists or even people who give a shit. No. Instead, it’s the local status market for all the look-at-me’s who roll up in land yachts and German V8s. Shopping there is a nightmare of ignorant yuppies cruising around like they own the place, who have no idea what the hell Wholefoods even exists for. Seriously, if you have an SUV like that, everything else you might try to do for the planet won’t cancel that out, especially since I doubt the average 13-passenger vehicle owner lives in a small and efficient apartment. Shopping there makes me want to make people disappear, first of all the jackass employee who parks hers or his rusty bike parallel to the bike rack, hogging the whole thing daily. I only go there for things I can’t get at the two other markets near my apartment.

Anyway, there are these Greenpeacers outside of Wholefoods in Washington. We are hot, sweaty, tired, have to pee and just want to get to the Smithsonian as quickly as possible. I know they don’t want me to sign something that I would probably really sign. I know they want a membership and that they are not getting one until I get hired. I know they are probably hot, too. So when “Mr. 22-year-old I know something so I know everything” approaches us, I try to save us all time by telling him the truth: we are in a hurry. He exclaims, “It will only take a minute!” and keeps shooting it and stomping his feet as we walk away. What. A. Weiner.

I want to run back, shake him and make me tell him what kind of car he drives. I want to shake him for all the “greener than thou” people I know, especially the ones who tell me stupid things that are not true — as if I am wrong for not “knowing” them while they are in fact false, hence my not “knowing” them. Especially people who go out of their way to tell you how green they are, how much they recycle, how they have organic shampoo — all the while owning a car they don’t need in a city where it’s easy to live without one. If one more person tells me about how they recycle their bath water over a big meat sandwich on a foam plate that they bought, I am going to snap.

I am not talking about people who own cars. Everyone I know, with one or two exceptions, owns a car. Or truck. I’m talking about people who want to be “hardcore” environmentalists but not give anything up, so they get all vocal and try to make you feel inferior to their green status. “I recycle, so it balances out. [insert other very false fact here] Johnny, you should…” Living a lie, in very obnoxious ways.

I know I’m not the greenest person around. I do have a thing for non-recycled notebooks, cheap pens, Tevas, imported beer, etc. But I don’t drive, don’t eat meat, don’t use “normal” products for cleaning my apartment or body, I live in a small apartment, don’t have AC at home. At least I’m trying and not lying to myself and everyone else and judging people who aren’t themselves first judgmental jerks. I do judge judgmental people, though. That’s probably a personal problem. Or, I like to think, me being the agent of the universe and balancing things out in some cosmic and ironic revenge on idiots who loudly think they know everything.

But that has nothing to do with organic potatoes and aloe-based toothpaste.