Giving to Charity

This weekend I gave a fortune to charity.

Every now and then at stoplights, there will be some crazy old guy with a fez hat on walking slowly from car to car with a large tin can in hand. I don't think they have to ask any more, people just give them money. They must be making a fortune, but I'm not too sure what the Shriners do with all that money. My guess is they blow it all on Cristal and cavier... the shriners be pimpin' all over the world.

With the exception of homeless signposts, the curbside collector is almost always these pastey old while guys with tassels on their head, so imagine my surprise when stopped at a light, I see a young, hatless, thirty-something, walking car to car with a giant rubber boot in hand. Instinctively, I started rolling up the window... for me this is the ultimate show of passive aggression. It not only is a polite signal that I will not be donating my money, it also affords me to freely say and think what I truly think of them. "Leave me alone, you walking traffic cone!" In my passive aggressive mind, I'd be shaking my fist emphatically.

My girlfriend, however, as I've said before, is full of surprises. She reached for her purse and began to search through it. With no bills in sight, she dumped, I'm going to say about, 40 cents of pennies and nickles into my hand. My mind automatically jumped to my change jar and my future llama - in my hand I held a virtual fortune. Before I could protest, however, her hand dove into the center console and returned with a fistful of change, doubling my stack. As Tiff picked out the non-change - life-saver, bottlecap, pen top - the top of a giant rubber boot appeared out my window full to the brim with dollars, lots and lots of dollars. I dutifully deposited my handful of loose change. "Every bit helps," the man's voice projected into my ear, as my heart sank with every muted clank of coin falling in his giant rubber boot. It will take months for me to collect that much change.

But wait. What else fell? Something had caught my eye. I turned to Tiff, she said, "I left a fortune for them" - we've had many a chinese fortune cookie in our days. "We gave a fortune to charity," she said getting her own joke.

***Like all good charity stories end: Please visit www.mda.org to learn more... I think that's what they were collecting for...