So something is happening that I just don’t understand. We just came through three months of holidays where every person on the city sidewalks, busy sidewalks has huge, giving hearts. Three months that spanned from the last quarter of last year and into the first quarter of the new year leaving one to believe that mankind is wonderful and that we could all really live in a space of joy and giving.
In the month of November, food drives and canned goods is a focus for all. Celebrating Thanksgiving tends to bring out the best in most people…and the guilt in some people who feel bad for having more than others. I propose that the guilt in some and best in most is the reason that every public space is littered with makeshift collection bins for the average givers to unload canned goods. If you go to a gym, there’s a drop bin at the front desk where they scan you’re troll-looking membership photo card. Drive near one of the elementary schools resting on every corner, and they send out their legions of smelly kids knocking on doors begging for cans of green beans, carrots and peas as they are being taught at a young age to embrace either their guilt or their goodness. Either way, you, the average giver, go and buy a case of canned beets.
In December, charities are exploding onto the sidewalks, bells and red pots are at every retail door entry. Again, for some, their guilt is played upon. For the average givers they have to choose which pot to throw change into. Usually if others are around and they can’t bare to look like an asshole, that’s where they throw their cold cash. In malls and gas stations alike, paper dolls hang from artificial trees with the names of real children who need real help receiving toys and goodies from Santa. Usually tight-fisted bosses hand out Christmas bonuses at the same time they pass out memos about the company’s chosen charity of the year that as a group the employees should all contribute to. Yep, there is no escaping the holidays or the heartstrings that are pulled at by the guilty and the good.
And just when you think it’s over and it is time to blow off some steam from the pressure that the guilty and the good have put your average giving heart through for the last two months, you welcome in January via the party night of New Years’ Eve. Yes, you think it is safe to go back to being an average humanitarian until your New Year’s resolutions are held in comparison to the guilty and the good. But, you apparently can’t just write resolutions that better yourself. No, you can’t only lose weight, or drink less or exercise more…oh no. You have to also donate your time to children or burn victims, join the board of some charitable organization and make donation phone calls, or spend time being a big sister to some kid you don’t even know.
Buy the time February rolls around, you are finally in a giving mood. After all you have been brow beaten and worn down by the good and the guilty for the last 90 days, and you’ve finally bought in and are ready to give when suddenly you find yourself alone. It is Valentines Day, a holiday of love and sex and togetherness but you can’t find a guilty or good giver anywhere and there are so many people who need help…real work. Valentines Day, the day of love and fantasy, the day that could only be described as soft and pink and should be a special one for all people but there are some who are not celebrating and have nobody to care about them because Valentine's day is a holiday that is charity-less. And how is that ok? Thanksgiving has charities for the hungry, Christmas has help for the poor, New Years brings money to the operating budgets of charities, and I personally think that Valentines Day should be filled with help for the uglies. There are ugly, lonely people walking the streets with nothing to celebrate on the best day of all…the day of love. They are forced to go into Walgreens the day after Valentines Day and buy the half priced box of heart shaped candies, go to their lonely apartments and eat it in the dark while they watch Grays Anatomy reruns on Lifetime.
If I had the time to start a Valentines Day charity I would take a few tips from the other holiday charities. I would place bins in businesses so that hair products could be left and distributed to the uglies. I would hang pictures of the uglies on heart shaped pieces of paper throughout malls and gas stations asking people to adopt them for a date night. And last but not least, I would host a large Valentines ball for all the unadopted uglies to come together in a night filled with champagne and strawberries in hopes that the uglies would hook up…even if it was just for one hope filled, magical night.
Live and Love Equally…Happy Valentine’s Day!