If you had a choice between smoking a cigarette or saving a life, I’m sure most of you would ditch the smoke, but if I mention that the act of saving that life costs one dollar more than you would pay on an annual bill, would you shrug it off and go smoke? One dollar has a varying amount of significance to people, but it can mean a lot more to those who don’t have one than those who do.
Every year there are great causes which ask for a dollar contribution, fully tax deductible in most cases, but people not only shrug off the request, but they get downright mean about it. Around the holidays, every charity gets its share, but not everybody eats well, finds a place to live or gets cured and/or disappears until next December when it all comes back again. Sure, I know that a lot of charities ask for ten, twenty or some larger amount, but I want to address the little organizations who work for the public good and ask for just one.
Sometimes in my job I get mail in which a customer has expressed disgust about a dollar contribution, and it usually comes after the fact. For example, the bill comes over a month in advance and lays out in detail what each amount charged is for, along with mention of the tax-deductible contribution. All one has to do is look at it and, if they have a question, just call. If a customer has authorized a credit card to be charged automatically for each year’s bill, it’s a sure thing that a month after that notice went out, at least one person will contact us and grouse about that dollar. They didn’t authorize it (they just threw the bill away without reading it), they don’t know a thing about it (because they threw away the leaflet that came with the bill, which also mentions a web page explaining what the dollar does), and dag gum it, they want their dollar back.
These are the same people who go to fancy pants restaurants and spend a day’s pay on food and alcohol which will be flushed into the sewers in a matter of hours. Yes folks, that exquisite stuff you just consumed (with poor table manners to boot) will be poo tomorrow. But that dollar you so indignantly coveted could buy several meals, or help dress a child with no clean dry clothes, or prevent a foreclosure, keep a drug abuser clean for one more day, or teach school children about traffic safety.
Or those folks who complain about the dollar would spend $40 on a case of cigarettes and smoke it away. I’ve always found smoking a bit strange: one runs from a burning building because the smoke is bad for you, but people who like cigarettes willingly inhale it.
So, Mr. Disgruntled Tightwad, you take back that dollar. I’d give it to you in person if I could. Smoke it away. Eat or drink it and release it into the void with a wad of toilet paper.
See you in December.
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