Your Help is Urgently Needed
I received a request for funds from a charity that I've donated to in the past. Money for shipping was urgently needed, it seems, and the flyer said, quite dramatically, "JUST ONE DOLLAR PUTS $123 WORTH OF CRITICALLY NEEDED SUPPLIES TO WORK!"Wait. Couldn't they just send $122 and 99.18% of their problem would be solved?
Just kidding. I'll be waiting for my Scrooge of the Year medallion and hope they have my name inscribed on it soon.
Gloria supports about a thousand charities, it seems, so we get a tidal wave of phone calls and written requests. My favorite ones are the youth-oriented programs. There are about five of them in this area, they're all fighting for the same charity dollars, and they all want to send kids to the circus in the summer. All of them. In my mind, I see kids in low-income families laying down the gauntlet to their parents:
"I'm not going to the damn circus again. I've been five times already this month."
"Now Johnny, we don't want to disappoint the nice people at We Give a Disturbingly Small Percentage of Our Solicited Funds to Help the Underprivileged Dream Foundation."
"Screw that. Tell them I want a book. Just a damn book!"
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