ARE you gifted out?
‘Cos I’m here to tell you I am.
Let me just run through the problem for you.
First in our own backyard.
We have always been contributors to the costs at the assorted schools attended by our kids.
Then there was their sport.
Sport? More like fair game.
We have, and still do, kick the can for football-netball, cricket, hockey, tennis (bit of a let-off there in the past couple of years), and now, and don’t bloody laugh – as we all eventually slow down – golf and lawn bowls.
And the missus has sponsored an overseas kid or two for years.
All this before I have barely set foot out the front door.
Where you soon bump into all the charity drives around the district – for the injured, the sick, the unfortunate and those just plumb out of luck. The flooded, those in drought, the burnt-out or the ones with the wrong product at the right time, or vice versa.
None of which I resented, because you and I both know one wrong step and it could be any one of us in the same boat. But from here on, things start to get overwhelming.
First, if you go to town you have to run the gauntlet of the sidewalk sellers, covering every charity known to man. Then there are the official days, weeks, and now even whole years – so many of them they are stacked four, five high in places.
There’s “world” this, “national” that. From breast cancer to plumbing problems – it’s enough to leave you prostrate on the floor.
But wait, there’s more.
First there were the pleading letters in the mail. Every week.
Then the aggressive marketers who came after you on the phone.
And because your phone is mobile, this is not just an at-home problem. They will track you across the paddock, get you in the header, at the saleyards, anywhere and almost any time – and these marketers are not in the business of taking “no” for an answer.
On top of that, every shop you go into has some sort of collection tin – alongside the one for tips – at the counter.
Even the supermarket has become a minefield of alms.
Apart from being bailed up by a never-ending rotation of collectors as you go in and come out (although I’ve never complained about a sausage sizzle or cake table), the supermarkets themselves are asking you to fund their assorted causes – they will even happily whack it on your card, so you don’t feel a thing.
Which recently reminded me of my grandfather moaning about my great-grandmother.
He said, as desperate as he was for new boots, or clothes, or even a boiled lolly when they went to town, she never seemed to have spare money.
But she was always putting money into the collection plate at church, which she apparently attended twice on Sundays and any other time she could fit it in.
“It’s for the poor,” she would always chide Gramps.
“Poor?” he used to rail at me (and anyone else within earshot). “We were the bloody poor, and I didn’t see anyone giving to us!”
Well fortunately their hard work, his hard work, and even my old man did a bit – just nowhere near as much as me – has meant we aren’t exactly on the bones of our backsides.
But it is starting to get expensive to help all these people who seem to be slipping through the cracks of society.
Maybe if it is that cracked, it’s time for some serious repair.
