A plastic bag is stuck in a tree. (Enterprise photo — Catherine Moore)

Shredded flags of plastic bags will never more be seen in the trees, melted to the bottom of our car mufflers or strangling wildlife. New York state has now banned the plastic bag. I don’t have too much of a grievance against plastic bags; it’s everything else made of plastic.

Without sounding like Andy Rooney whining about plastic, the truth is that a person could starve to death with they way they package food in plastic. At first I thought it was just my old feeble hands couldn’t open anything wrapped in package, but not so. We took my grandson to the movies, and he picked out a box of candy. It was wrapped in cellophane, and I watched his little fingers pick at it. Finally he gave it to me, saying, “Grandma … open.” My instinct was to do what I did as a kid and open everything with my teeth, but I refrained and picked at it for another 10 minutes until I finally opened it.

Why is it that the plastic packaging seems to be getting thicker and harder to open? You practically have to have a tool belt with a hacksaw and a Swiss Army knife to open it. While your car rusts out within 10 years, those plastic Playskool playhouses last long after kids grow up and retire.

Think about how plastic has appeared in our lives. Just like in the 1967 film “The Graduate,” the neighbor tells Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) at his graduation party that one word of advice that would change his future — “plastics. … There’s a great future in plastics.”

It’s changed our future alright. No more sandwiches wrapped in wax paper in a paper bag, meat wrapped in white paper and string, and even water from the tap.

It might get worse.

Our future will be sunning ourselves while floating on our plastic island, with a tummy full of microbeads and BPA, living in our plastic Playskool house. We might be toothless, too, from trying to open the plastic, childproof bottle of aspirin with our teeth.