Ya Gotta GIVE!

I do my part in giving to charities where I can. I'm not a rich person, and I'm not the kind of person who "gives 'til it hurts," but I can comfortably donate some small sums of money. There are particular charities I feel strongly about giving to, like the American Cancer Society, the American Lung Association, Mazon and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation . I give to these organizations pretty regularly, and I feel good about doing that.

I figure that a concentrated approach is better than nickle and diming the world and all it's bajillions of charities. Sometimes I'll give the odd donation here and there if the organization seems legitimate and deserving (like those folks over at the Alzheimers Foundation.)

What I don't appreciate is being badgered into giving. I'm not talking about the annoying bell ringers of the Salvation Army here, who are incidentally paid to stand there and ring the bell for Jesus. No, I am talking about the phone calls.

Charities think that just because people are walking around with their wallets open for the entire month of December, that they are not only entitled to their fair share of the booty, but they are also entitled to disrupting you at home to get it.

About two weeks ago, I started tallying the phone calls (I don't mind the flood of mail I get from charities. In fact, this is the best way to get my attention). I am at 11. And please, this isn't counting all of the calls that come when I'm not home, where the caller ID proclaims, "UNAVAILABLE"

This morning, at 8:25 a.m. I got a phone call. I was just barely awake, and really not coherent. The phone rang, and I picked it up. The caller ID said "UNAVAILABLE," but I thought it might be an international phone call, since those calls also don't work with caller ID, and people who live in Europe are the only ones who deign to call me that early.

In fact, I was so sure the call was from Europe, that I answered the phone in German.

Instead of a friendly voice, someone with a really high-pitched tone asked me if I was home, by horribly mispronouncing my last name. "What do you want?" I asked, admittedly pretty gruff.

What followed was a confusing barage of rapid-fire upspeak that would just not end. I think a Minnie Mouse impersonator from the Valley called me, representing either Yoplait or the Diabetes Foundation. Now she wasn't calling to ask me for money.

No, no, no money - what she wanted me to do is buy stamps, which is really implies exchanging money, right? I don't know. Keep in mind that I was still half asleep.

Then came instructions. Rapid fire instructions. Rapid fire instructions in a very high pitched voice that were impossible to understand, and really annoying. Sometime during her sentence that included the words, "your friends, and your family, and your friends' families, and your neighbors, and your clients...." I hung up the phone.

Several hours later and more coherent, I am kind of sorry that I might have hung up on one of my charities. But come ON. Don't have a Disney character on speed wake me up early in the morning and confuse the shit out of me. This is not going to get me to send you any money.