Kid with a Clipboard

A commercial played this afternoon where someone rang a doorbell.  The dogs started barking.  Silly dogs, I thought...I thought they had learned to distinguish between TV and reality.  But maybe FedEx had delivered a package.  I'm expecting several of them, but not until Monday.  But just to be sure, I went to the front door to check, not looking out the peep hole first.  [The peep hole is one I had Walt install several years ago to protect me from the sweet little Mormon ladies who loved to talk with Walt.  The older I get the more I get like my father in the last years of his life (he died at 72).]

When I opened the door, imagine my shock when I saw a sweet faced kid with a clipboard in his hand standing there.  So the dogs had heard the real doorbell.  I don't really know what he was there for, other than it had something to do with ecology.  The dogs kept up barking so loud that I couldn't hear him and, bad me, I shut the door in his face.

Afterwards, I thought about how many people have shut the door in his face and how he was just an idealistic guy willing to pound the pavement on a hot afternoon to convince people to join his cause. And I felt guilty for not letting this unwanted intruder disrupt my afternoon trying to talk to me about an issue I should care about, but knew I wasn't going to be giving him money for.  But I didn't feel that guilty, so I'm sure I'm going to hell.

I understand that there is a syndrome known as "Political Fatigue" or "Charitable Fatigue."  Or something like that.  When whoever was describing it talked about it, I immediately knew I suffered from it.  After my brief, intense involvement in various political issues and candidates around 2008 and several years after that, I find that I am deluged by so many emails and junk mail that I just want to scream JUST GO AWAY AND LEAVE ME ALONE!!!

The country is going to hell in a handbasket because every time (this includes several times a day) I get an e-mail from the Democratic party or various political candidates, in California or other states across the country, telling me that if I just give $3 (though I think it has gone up to $5 lately) we can save the country.  If I just give $3 before 5 p.m., I can defeat Boehner's attempt to do...just about anything.  I could very easily go broke trying to stay ahead of what appear to be Boehner's nefarious plans for destroying the country.

(I have a feeling that I have a doppelganger somewhere who is getting the same e-mails from the Republican party concerning Nancy Pelosi)

When I fail to send $3 every other hour, I get messages with titles like DEVASTATION! (always caps, usually with an exclamation point).   These remind me that I have NOT sent them $3 and as a result of my inattention, the country is about to implode.

Most of these go to junk mail without my seeing them, but occasionally some slip through the walls.  This one, for example, which made me feel quite special, since apparently out of the entire population of Davis, I and 34 others are the special ones:

I'm tapping you to be one of 35 Democrats in Davis to chip in before tomorrow's deadline, Bev.

Democrats are in one hell of a fight this year, and we need everyone to pitch in and do their part -- because this is our last chance to give Barack a Congress that will work with him.

Chip in $3 or more before midnight tomorrow

When they fail to hear from me, the guilt trips start.  'Perhaps you didn't see our first message," will come the first reminder, then "We are still waiting for you," and ultimately hints of what terrible things will happen to the country if I don't join the cause.

Then there are the charitable organizations that start by thanking me for my generous support over the years.  These are organizations I have never supported, but they want to remind me that it's time to give them money again.  They are all good organizations that I would happily support if I weren't already tapped out with the money going to Compassion every month.  UNICEF and Save the Children are thrilled with all of my donations and could I give just a little more...even though I have not contributed to either of those organizations because all the spare money goes to a different children's organization.

Perhaps the funniest pleas for money or signing petitions aren't addressed to me.   They come to my gmail account and they start out "Dear xxxxx"  For xxxx substitute the name that I mistyped on some long ago petition when my fingers were on the wrong keys of my keyboard and I was signing so fast that I didn't notice.  That non-name name gets almost as much mail as "Bev" does!

There a lot of issues, politicians, charitable organizations out there that are worthy of my money or my support, but if they would just STOP WRITING TO ME EVERY DAY and give me space now and then, I might actually send $3 occasionally, but I know if I do, I will never, ever, EVER be free.

(We actually did support Special Olympics for several years until their requests for money got so overwhelming that I called them and told them that if they couldn't send fewer than daily requests for money, we would never contribute to them again.  They could not and we have not...and I feel bad about that, because I think Special Olympics is worthy of my support, but if I send them so much as a dollar I'll be back in that oppressive loop again.)

So if you have a clipboard, please do not stop by my house.  If you're lucky, I'll check the peephole and not open the door.  If I slip and forget to check first, I will probably shut the door in your face.

I am a bad person.  But I finally understand that antisocial sign on my father's door when he was my age:  "If you have not been invited here, you are trespassing.  Please leave or I will call the police." 

I thought that was a terrible thing then, but now...maybe not so much!

I'm a Bitch

I lied to the woman and then I hung up on her.

I'm sure she was a nice woman. She had a soft-spoken Southern drawl and identified herself as calling from some Southern state. She was representing a Cause and she wanted me to mail out pleas for donations and be the collection point for my neighborhood.

The effort would take place in March and I lied and said I would be out of the country in March (Well, March and May have the same first letter, right?) and then when she said "Well, ma'am, we appreciate that...but....") I hung up on her.

And then I felt guilty about it. I could just imagine her calling me a bitch when she found herself speaking to dead air. And she'd have been right.

But I've done a number of these collection drives over the year, each one upsets me, and I'm getting old and cranky. I'm getting more like my antisocial father every day (I am, after all, only 4 years younger than he was when he died and he'd been antisocial for several years before his death!)

It's not that I don't want to help worthy organizations. I help lots of worthy organizations, when I can. But each time I become the "neighborhood leader" I have to deal with the reality of how unfriendly our neighborhood is to me...or maybe after all these years I'm still carrying around hurts that other people dropped years ago.

When the packet comes, I sit and look at it and I put it off and put it off and put it off so long that it finally gets buried and I find it months later. Really, dear lady, you are better getting someone who will actually do the job to volunteer!

I hate feeling a prisoner of my telephone. That by the sheer act of picking up the receiver too quickly, before I can check the caller ID, I have to listen to this lady beg me to do something I don't want to do. I'm sure this is the very cheapest way to run a fund drive. You get lots of people to pay for postage to each mail out a few notices or, better, drop them in their neighbors' mailboxes. Then you hope that your representative is honest enough to send any money collected to your office and all that will go towards research to help cure your own particular cause, whether it's heart or cancer, or AIDS, or diabetes, or ALS or multiple sclerosis or the heartbreak of psoriasis. Worthy causes all. All needing funds. All trying to get some local good-hearted person to help them collect money, and I'm a bitch because I don't want to be that good-hearted person any more.

Many years ago, I had Walt put a peep hole in the front door so I can decide if I want to answer the door or not. If someone is standing there with a clipboard, I won't answer. If someone has moved halfway down the driveway and is waiting for me, afraid that the dogs are going to get him/her, I don't answer the door.

The peep hole was necessitated by the visits of two very lovely Jehovah's Witness ladies, who thought that Walt was eagerly waiting to get the latest Watchtower. He was much more polite than I. He would stand there and speak with them, and then throw their magazines away. To their credit, they never tried to preach to me. They only wanted Walt but it seemed like they were showing up every couple of weeks while he was at the office and I just didn't want to deal with them any more.

It's strange that I feel bad for hiding from solicitors, however lofty their causes. I think that just because you own a phone or a house is no reason why you HAVE TO talk with people with whom you don't want to speak.

Yet, when I hung up on my caller today, I felt like a terrible bitch. Like maybe I would have been a better person to agree to do what she wanted me to...and then do what I usually do--forget all about it.