Being the Gift Horse

 

I winced as I looked at her smiling, fat face.  Her cartoon resembled her and those like her.  As I flipped the newsletter over, I know it was intended for me to feel glad that “Amber found a home.”  (that is her real name, they didn’t change it.)  When I opened the newsletter, the non-cartoon, black and white photo of her new digs and her comrades also made me wince.  No smiling faces to the camera, just bare backsides … in a mud pen.

This is not an appeal from a charity in a Third World Country.  It is, believe it or not, a Pig Sanctuary.  How my name got on their mailing list I will never know.  They are on the west coast doing their pot-bellied pig rescue efforts and wanting my east coast money to shore them up.  Not happening.

My neighbor sometimes has trouble starting the wood pile fire in the back so he is counting on me to come over there weekly and bring a paper bag FULL of charity appeals that I get in the mail so we can start the “camp fire.”  Someone must have sold my name on the lists under the headings of “Religious” and “Animal Lovers.”  For your entertainment, I will tell you “who” is after me:  the Salesians, the Franciscans, the Oblates, the Native American charities, the charities that feed children, the charities that rescue dogs and cats on Long Island (where I do NOT live) and save animals indigenous to other continents, the people that train dogs for veterans, and all veterans and police charities, local helicopter services, fire departments, and various politicians.  It is not an exaggeration to say I get about 20 pieces of charity junk mail each week.

A Guilt Gift is sometimes enclosed.  The agenda there is that if the sender puts a gift in, you may somehow feel morally obliged to contribute back to their charity to offset their costs.  Honestly, that part of my moral consciousness died last year.  Finally.  All of this unwanted mail coming to my box like a trojan horse with Greek soldiers hidden inside has worn away at my moral veneer. The guilt gifts are predictable:  It may be a nickel taped to the letter urging you to return it.  It may be a fake two-dollar bill folded so you can see it in the window of the envelope.  Money is, after all, a great motivator.  holy water from a religious site, a medal with a saint on it, a religious symbol appropriate to whatever season is nearest (Christmas or Easter are common).  Sometimes They send me note pads, with or without my name, and often they are very cutely designed.  And have I got address labels.  I could wallpaper my bathroom with all the free address labels I’ve received.  Lastly, there are The Mass cards.

I guess I took it for granted that everyone knew what a Mass card was until my friend at work said, “what is that?”  I explained:  It is a card you get from a charity that you send to a friend or loved one and inside it is the inscription:  A Mass is being said for you on (insert religious holiday name here) at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Alps (I made that up).  So instead of you going to the grocery store or pharmacy to purchase a card for $5, you send $5, 10 or $20 to the charity itself as a donation to their ministry (feeding some people perhaps in a Third World Country or USA inner city).  Let me be clear:  You don’t have to request these cards.  Once you get on someone’s mailing list, they keep coming and coming and coming in packs of three or four.  Some of them are nice, some of them are too glitzy for my taste.  But “I hate to throw them out” so I have a few boxes of them, organized by category … because I don’t have anything better to do with my time(?).  Mass cards can be for birthdays, Mother’s/Father’s Day, Christmas, Easter, Thinking of You, or sympathy cards.  To be clear:  in order for me to use all the sympathy cards I got in the mail from the charities, Everyone I have ever known or met in my life would have to simultaneously drop dead, and I would STILL have at least 5 left over cards in my Mass card collection at home.

Money is important.  How we utilize it is also very important.  So how can we choose what charities to support financially?  First, I eliminate almost anyone whom I suppose already gets government funding.  As a former worker in a 501(c)3 charity, I want to support the underdog, the “little guy.”  Oftentimes the smaller charities are able to accomplish more with a dollar because they don’t get strangulated in red tape.  Although, there are a few donations I’ve made to illness-related charities in memory or honor of a friend who struggled with that illness.  Next, I look for the Better Business bureau symbol or the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability symbol - I want some indication that the charity actually exists and that someone holds them accountable for how money is used. Then I pick one for each month of the year and write the names on an index card to tuck into the back of my checkbook as a reminder when I’m writing out monthly bills to be faithful to those who need me.

It has been said that God cannot be outdone in generosity.  It is for that reason that even when times are tough and the take-home pay barely seems to take you home, we should remain generous.  We should remember those who have less than us:  people who will never own a vehicle or rent/own a home; children that were born into tragic circumstances; people who have put their lives on the line so that we may live in a free country; animals that rely on the compassion of humans to protect them from worse humans.  The need is endless.  But if each of us remains faithful to whatever need  touches our heart, then we will make the world a better place, one check at a time... even for pot-bellied pigs.  

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Accidental Speed Dating

 

It started with a sneeze.  And then there was about 8 minutes of relentless, one-way speed dating that I did not ask for which continued until I walked away.  As I told my father the other night on the phone, “It used to take me eight months to decide that I couldn’t tolerate someone’s nonsense.  Now it only takes eight minutes.” 

Last Saturday I went into Tractor Supply to look at blueberry bushes.  Their bushes were dried out; the flowerettes on them were crispy-dead and I can’t imagine who would be dumb enough to buy plants that looked THAT BAD.  So I went inside.  I heard chicks and ducklings in the tower-sized brooder calling so I went over.  I do not know why I don’t visit them every year:  they are so cool.  No matter what is happening in life, watching baby chicks just do what they do makes you feel better.  Whatever it is that they do.  And every now and then one sits in the corner with his eyes half-mast and you wonder if he is going to make it and then that wrecks the whole thing.  But I digress.

The next thing I heard was this FWAH-FWAH sound.  I wandered toward it, wondering if they were torturing goats in the back of the store.  Nope.  It turned out to be a kid about 8 to 10 years old that was playing with a dog toy.  Relentlessly.  It was a noise worse than nails on a chalkboard.  Almost worse than the Styrofoam cooler that used to squeak in the back of our station wagon when my parents took us to the beach.  That sound actually makes me nauseous.  I do not know why.  But when I saw this kid, deliberately, rhythmically, incessantly, tweaking that dog toy and his mother just blah-blah-blahing to her husband who had draped himself almost hopelessly over the handlebar of the shopping cart … I had to leave the area.  The school teacher in my soul was about to kick-in and it would have been loud and very few people would be left standing from the blast.

I was so very stressed from that relentless FWAH-FWAH sound that I could not complete my mission to inspect the protein level in a certain brand of dog food.  That, and the bag was over 20 pounds and up on a higher shelf so I could not move it.  I stood there feeling a bit defeated.  Eight feet away, a man sneezed.  I said, “Bless you.”  He retorted with the very p.c. response, “I’m not sick.”  And I turned to look at him and said, “And I’m not worried about that.”  He added, “You know. Pretty soon we are going to have to all carry vaccination cards.”  And, non-plussed, I said:  “I’m not worried about that either.”  Then he began.

He told me about his four-year-old dachshund that just had $7,000 surgery at the major animal hospital in New York that is famous for both their surgeries and their price-gouging.  He told me about his little garden that is troubled by rabbits and squirrels – the reason why his dachshund has burned-out it’s joints digging or whatever after critters.  He told me about his lymph node under his right armpit that he had to utilize the mammography machine to get it checked out.  He told me he drove truck for a delivery company and that it makes him nervous when people accept packages from him and are not wearing masks, so he just slides things across their deck/patio to them. 

And all the while he is going on about this, I have this strange, but usual to me, train of thought going on in my head:

                He is kind of handsome.  Well-kept.  Nice eyes ... above his mask.

                He’s not skinny and that doesn’t bother me.  Apparently me being “not skinny” doesn’t bother him.

                I wonder where we could meet for coffee around here if I wanted to continue this conversation.

And then ….

                He’s got a mouth like he licked a potty.  I’ve heard every swear word I know, including the F-word come out of him.  Scratch the coffee.

And just like that, the impromptu speed date was done.  He got some practice in, and I turfed another man in short order.  Here’s why.  It’s not that I don’t use a few cow pasture words myself.  It’s that when a person is supposed to be on their GOOD behavior to impress you, if they talk like that so naturally, you are a FOOL if you think they are going to talk nicer to you later.  A DARNED FOOL.  I imagined him saying the F-word in front of my parents.  That aint’ gonna fly.  I imagined how he would talk to a girlfriend or wife when he got angry – which happens inevitably in every relationship.  I just couldn’t believe in his ability to change.

One of my friends said to me this week, “well people can change.”  I told her I wasn’t so sure anymore.  I know that I tried to give up the BULL SH*T word and I couldn’t do it.  I could NOT do it.  It just described powerfully so many situations that I needed it in my repertoire.  Why is it that I want a man who is genteel, who is educated but fun, who is more likely to excuse my own idiosyncrasies than to blurt back at me:  THAT is UTTER BULLSH*T!  It’s because of one simple thing:  I want to marry UP. 

It is unlikely that I will be raising children with someone when I get married, IF I get married.  I am old enough to presume that ship has sailed.  So I don’t need to evaluate a man as “father” material as I assess him for what he brings to the table.  I just have to ask:  Can I enjoy talking with this person?  Will he like watching re-runs with me?  Does he love dogs and will he help me with my dog business?  Will he want to walk with me by the ocean after eating spaghetti somewhere great?  I used to think I would be in youth ministry forever in some shape, manner, or form, so it would be so great to have a man who IS good with kids … almost fatherly to an orphaned generation … I might go back to youth ministry … okay, so I take it back.  Father-material is still on the table.  Plus the other thing ….

If I was to date THAT guy, he would always say:  “You know, you talk a lot.  The longest you let ME TALK was the day I met you at Tractor Supply.  From there on out, I can’t get a word in edgewise.”  And maybe that is all there is to it.

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