Funny how old advertising slogans stay with you. “Reach out and touch someone” keeps coming
back to my mind a lot these days. It a
telephone company campaign urging people to keep up their family connections by
using the phone. This was back in the
days when we watched our long distance fees.
That’s not why it keeps coming to my mind, however.
I consider myself to be a reasonably generous person. I’ll lend a hand, or a blouse, or some money
to friends and family when it’s necessary.
That’s what we do…we take care of our own, right? But for the last few years giving to United
Way and the Red Cross and the church and the local food pantry doesn’t seem to
be nearly enough.
My husband and I just recently returned from a trip to
Florida. Since our stay was a month long
we had to shop for groceries and toiletries from time to time. At the entrance and exit to almost every
store a table was set up to collect money for football teams, new fire trucks,
a bird sanctuary or pet rescue. Stopping
at a traffic light you might get a tap on your window from band students
collecting money for new uniforms or firemen carrying a boot they hope to fill
for whatever cause they’re trying to fund.
Back in town after our break from the winter weather we find
cashiers (as they are instructed to do) asking if we’d like to “round up” for
the domestic violence shelter, or donate a dollar for juvenile diabetes. In
restaurant waitresses are hawking shamrocks that will be signed and posted on
the restaurant walls if you donate a dollar.
This is also the season when parents help their kids sell cookies, candy
bars, popcorn and assorted gift items by sheepishly leaving the signup sheets
in break rooms at every business.
Not to be forgotten in the continuous pitch on the internet
of acquaintances who are in “sales”.
These internet entrepreneurs never seem expand their pool of potential
customers to anyone other than their Face Book friends list. “I’m close to my goal on my (fill in the blank)
party or order…can’t someone help me out and buy something?” Electronic panhandling is rampant. I never thought I’d miss the days when your
friends actually invited you to their homes to share punch and cookies so they
could guilt you into buying something or booking a “party”, but I do.
My email in-box is filled every day with requests from
political parties who “try not to come to our members too often” but seem to
overcome that thought on a weekly basis.
I hear daily from deserving programs and hospitals and not so deserving
televangelists, from groups sinking wells and building schools in foreign
countries and organizations who strive to feed the hungry on our own shores.
Snail mail doesn’t suffer any shortage of donation requests
either. Daily I am asked to support the
fund raising efforts for wounded veterans, children in poor countries in need
of surgery, food, and shelter, abused animals.
Groups trying to save the rain forest or seals or polar bears, also find
their way to my mail box with great regularity.
This endless winter will soon be over and the walks and 5K
runs, always for a good cause, will begin.
A dollar a mile to help find a cure for any number of dreadful diseases…and
watch out for youngsters brandishing “Car Wash!!!” signs who will be charging
your vehicle at every turn.
I don’t know if everyone got the idea from the long established campaign of The Salvation
Army, an organization I believe does a great deal of good. Personally, I try to remember to
keep change in my purse at Christmas because I suffer an hour long guilt trip
every time I pass a bell ringer and fail to contribute.
If I put money into the container on the way into the store
I feel I have to explain myself to get out the door if the bell ringer looks
over at me as I exit. “Uh…you got me
coming in. I..uh…I gave the cashier my
change”. I slink away after rummaging
through my coat pockets that produce nothing but a lint covered cough
drop. “Really….I gave you money on the
way in.”
It probably sounds jaded, but I know a lot of these requests
are strictly raising money to support the overpaid infrastructure of the
organization. That is not to say all of
these things are run by con artists; but it’s really hard to tell the good guys
from the bad guys any more. I prefer to
support local efforts whose results can be documented and, hopefully,
witnessed.
I am not making light of the needs we have in our country
and around the world. It just seems to me that we pay more than
enough in taxes to take much better care of the needs of our citizenry without
having to constantly pass the hat.
As irritating as this constant barrage of arm twisting can
be, I will keep contributing to things I believe in and reevaluate them from
time to time as the “reach out and touch someone” landscape changes and
evolves.
Life is Good
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