Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Knock. Knock. Who's there?...Wait, I don't give a damn.

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This is the season that door-to-door canvassers seem to be out collecting for every possible cause under the sun. The cure to diaper rash, the prevention of nighttime sunburn, The collection for orphans and widows in Beverly Hills. You name it and there is an organization collecting for it.  Why door-to-door?  I found out the other day.

A young man, nicely dressed and with good elocution came to our door and after our dog settled down and decided not to rip his face off, we had a brief conversation. He was raising money for inner city kids to study abroad. Let me think about that for a moment. At first blush it sounds like a good idea. Kids from poor families who might not have a chance to go abroad to see the museums, the cathedrals; to experience the architecture, the art, the languages…Why yes, that would be a grand idea. To broaden a few kids’ worldview. What was wrong with that?

I asked the name of the organization and he stuttered something like the Greater Texas Child Development and Education Fund. I had never heard of it, but then again, I hadn’t heard of half of the causes that come to our door — like the International Prevention of Leopard Spot Changing. I asked the young man if he had any information on his group and he said he did not, but he did offer that he, himself, was planning on going to England, if he could raise enough points. 

“How do raise points?” I asked. (Wrong thing to ask. You are locked into the giving cycle now.) He reached into an old sack he as using for a satchel and removed three bags of candy.  “Every bag of candy I sell I get two points. All I need is 5,000 points and I can spend six weeks studying in London.”

Wow, why haven’t I heard about this for my kids.  I would have gladly bought all the candy myself and sent them to Siberia for four years‑ without cell phones, of course.

I felt sorry for the kid so I bought three bags of his candy. Two sacks of  hard, peppermint swirls and one bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Grand total, $25 U.S. dollars.  Six points toward an education with a cockney accent.  Go get ‘em kid.

He left.  I handed the bag of Reese’s chocolate to my daughter who took a bite and immediately spit it out on the floor in disgust.  The candy was at least sixty years old.  It was horrible. The peppermints were no better.

It was a con job. Pure and simple deception. He probably had gotten the candy at Halloween in 1998 and had been planning this ruse ever since. So here is the bad thing.  A few days later a boy scout showed up at my door selling tickets to their annual pancake breakfast.  I now have a rule. We buy nothing…NOTHING…at our door from anyone.  Jesus could be selling salvation tickets and we are not interested. Period.

So the poor Boy Scouts lost out because of a jerk wad posing as a member of some Travel to Europe and Study Abroad group who sold us bogus candy.

Moral to this story:  You want a good education?  Get it in Dallas and let the English keep their schools to themselves.

I am going to be a scrooge this Christmas. Every benevolent society that comes knocking at our door gets a big resounding NO WAY, from me.  Sorry. Blame it on the kid with the stale candy.

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