Paper or Plastic.

She decided that groceries in paper bags are heavier than groceries in plastic bags.

The walk home made this idea clear to her, even though her walk was more of a wobble in her shiny, off-brand six-inch heels that her sister gave her- unwrapped with the price tag still attached- for her fortieth birthday.

The plastic bags, she thought as she stumbled across a broken slab of concrete pavement, stretch and break after a while, so at least then the pain from the handles digging into the fingers ends and one can stop and wait before pressing on. Sometimes, if one is lucky, one can get help from somebody like a paperboy coming home on his new blue bike from Baskin Robins or some video game store, because his mom is a good friend and he'll get grounded if he doesn't help.

Sometimes, when her husband got off work early and didn't have other plans at the bar, he would put some of the groceries in the trunk and let her sit in the passenger seat. She hated those days sometimes.

But the paper bags, oh, they were the worst. She could usually fit all her groceries into just two bags, instead of the typical four plastic bags, but the paper bags felt like needy toddlers that always started screaming in crowded elevators. When they broke, the bags were totally useless. If something spilled, everything was lost.

The paper bags filled her arms, which were now wrinkly, ugly, stained, like printer paper that her husband spilled coffee on before her first child. That printer paper was once decent-looking. She could have finished her dissertation on that paper. She could have written a letter, or a note, to the person she regretted leaving... Those bags made her front heavy, made her feet hurt even more, made it difficult to wobble on.

Those bags fit easily on her hip bones, just like the infants she gave him, which were, in the beginning, just like the utopian dream from the song on "The World's Best Recordings"- "a boy for you, a girl for me"- that she couldn't remember the name of. Those paper bags made her look so faithful, like a proper wife. Advocates of conformism and "the woman's place in society" would be so proud.

The paper bags were heavier. She hated paper bags, but she used them anyway because he preferred them. "They're easier to recycle", he would say, every time she asked to use plastic, "That way, we can have more paper bags later."

More paper bags, she thought, I can't use paper bags anymore. I can't walk with them. My arms hurt. I can't buy new shoes. I have to use that money for groceries.

When she came to the register a week later, the cashier, "Diamond", asked, "Paper or plastic?"

She said, "Plastic."

She didn't care anymore. That paper bag- the one that could be recycled to make more paper bags- could be turned into printer paper so a woman somewhere else can write a dissertation, graduate college, and become financially independent, instead of get married to a dead-beat right after sophomore year, have children, and become a home-maker who's only assignment is to bring home groceries in preferably paper bags.