Things went along OK for a while, I would send the $30 off and would receive the occasional correspondence from "Yolanda." The letters and accompanying drawings were obviously written and drawn by an adult but would always include the disclaimer, "assisted by field office." This meant somebody was in a high-rise somewhere churning out these doodles and progress reports about school and family that had never met her or Ndoogo or whoever.
This continued for a few months until I started to receive the "special request" letters. Could you send an extra $25 because it was "shoe month" or " art supply month ?" (Yolanda must have needed new pencil crayons to keep those "authentic" drawings coming). It was a reputable charity but came across as a little deceitful and taking advantage of peoples spirit of giving (not to mention the other "G" word... guilt). I used to think that all the money they spent on correspondence they could just put towards the kids.
I probably could have just sent the money but at the time I was donating to just about any charity that asked, Heart and Stroke Foundation, Billy Graham, Big Brothers, some Firefighters Fund, tithing at a church I was attending and handing out cash to homeless people... which reminds me of one quick story...
One Saturday afternoon I was crossing the street at the southeast corner of Burrard and Robson...
It was crowded as it usually is weekend afternoons and about halfway through the intersection I was approached by an elderly gentleman who requested some spare change. Reaching into my pocket I retrieved a two-nie and as I dropped the coin into his hand I said the words I'll never forget, "There you go, chief."
He absolutely loses it, " Don't you ever fuckin' call me chief... ever !!!" Totally surrounded by the Robson faithful I wanted to crawl under a rock. I know better than to call anyone chief (he wasn't even native) and to this day I don't know why it came out of my mouth- I knew it was a mistake as soon as I said it.
Anyway like the title of this post says, no good deed goes unpunished... and hopefully Yolanda turned out fine without my donations...
2 comments:
Chief!
Not as bad as my moment!
In fall of 1976, I was a freshman wrestling cheerleader/manager and I ran down the hallway of a school that was holding a major tournament. I was after one of our seniors that had grabbed something from me... and I ran into an open doorway yelling, "Terry, You Niggah!" (Back then, it wasn't quite so bad and we didn't have ANY black students in our school). Well.
Turned out it was the 'Host' room and there were MANY wrestlers from many towns laying all over the place and, unfortunately, MANY were black.
Oops...I have a similar one.
We were 19 yrs old and at a bush party in Penticton. A buddy of mine was handing out some beers from a case behind a log and when he didn't pass me one I inadvertently blurted out, "What am I, black?" I've never said anything like that before or since but this one time the only black girl that was living in town was sitting right beside him on the log...I apologized and she was pretty good about it but I could have crawled under that log...
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