Driving Minnie Bonkers

I have this friend -- one of my dearest friends in the world. We'll call her "Minnie," after Minnie Mouse -- think number of beers equating to level of octaves above normal voice range, and you'll understand the reference. She is truly and honestly the nicest, most patient person on Earth. It takes a great deal to make Minnie angry. I've seen it, but I've known her for a very long time, and I think I've seen it once. Enter my new obsession with being green.

We were on a "Girls Only" vacation, which a good group of friends and I do biannually ("biannual" sounds better than "that's as often as we can afford it"). I had already driven everyone crazy (or at least driven them to laughter) by going around obsessively turning off lights and unplugging unused appliances. Minnie started to tell us a story. We weren't talking about being green, the environment, nature, or anything of the sort. Minnie started to tell her story and she said, "So I went into the convenience store to buy a bottle of water..." when I jumped with "You shouldn't buy bottled water!" and proceeded to inform (er...lecture?) her on the plight of the environment due, in large part, to the billions of water bottles that have ended up in our landfills.

I had to laugh because Minnie -- who, let me reiterate, is the nicest human I know -- looked at me with darts coming out of her eyes. Had she had a water bottle in her possession at that moment...well, let's just say I'm glad she didn't.

 Is trying to persuade someone to be Green like trying to persuade an addict? They have to really WANT to change or you can't make them? Can you lead by example? Or do you need to educate people? I don't know the research, but I'm pretty sure there's a link between annoying someone and having them decide to do exactly the opposite of what you want them to. Minnie still buys bottled water.