A Time to Give

It’s all Lucy Liu’s fault. A couple of years ago she was on Oprah, talking about how we should give to United Way. I’m totally a sucker for charities that tell you exactly where your money will go. Lucy said, “If you donate $10, that will give a family a meal kit for a week plus two warm blankets.” Awesome, I thought. So I gave $5 and patted myself on the back for feeding a family for half a week and giving them one blanket. Hopefully it was a small family.

Ever since then I get about three letters a day from various charitable organizations. The United Way totally sold me out. Sometimes it’s cancer victims, sometimes it’s heart attack patients, but most of the time it’s very sad looking children. I could wallpaper my entire office in charitable return address labels.

And what about those nickels? Do you ever get those? Now there’s a moral dilemma. I’ll get this nickel in the mail and it says if I just contributed a nickel a day, those sad kids wouldn’t be hungry. Now what am I supposed to do with that nickel? I can’t just throw away perfectly good money. But I can’t USE a nickel that’s supposed to go to poor, sick kids. And sometimes it’s a dime! They’re torturing me!

One day, after a particularly bad week of charitable mail, I went off on a guy in the Wal-Mart parking lot. He came up to me and this is how it went down:

Random guy in Wal-Mart Parking Lot: Hey, how are you doing? Did you get a lot of shopping done?

WG: Yup. Gotta go.

Random Guy: Wait just one second please. See, I’m raising money for kids with cancer.

WG: No, thanks.

Random Guy: But if you just give $10, you can help to cure a kid with cancer.

WG: No, don’t think so.

Random Guy: What? You don’t want to help kids with cancer?

(This is where I got steamed. How does the fact that I don’t want to hand out cash to a strange guy in the Wal-Mart parking lot equal that I don’t want to help kids with cancer? There’s no connection. So I decided to mess with his head.)

WG: Well, don’t you think they kinda deserved it?

Random Guy: What?

WG: Those kids with cancer. I mean, they must have done something pretty bad to get cancer. They’re bad kids. They deserve it.

Random Guy: You are the most horrible person I’ve ever met!

WG: Maybe, but at least I’m not begging people for money in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

Charities, keep your return address labels, nickels and random parking lot solicitors away from Writinggal!

My next beef: Salvation Army Bell Ringers, where are your Santa suits?