Singing the Begging Blues

You know what? I'm sick to death of seeing pictures of kids with cancer. And of skinny dogs with barbed wire wound around their necks. And of all the cities devastated by floods and what a diseased lung looks like and how plastic straws choke the life out of the dolphins in the Red Sea. No wonder we're all so depressed. (Yes we are.)

If I want to give money to a charity, I'll find one on my own and send a check. I don't need free note pads or tote bags or mailing labels or ugly calendars as incentive. Pictures of the starving babies or the kids with no lower lip or the returning war vets missing limbs make me sick, literally, and I'm about done with all of them. Hey, I got my own problems.

In fact, we all have our own problems. Sure, some are worse than others but still they are problems. One of my friends can't eat anything without getting sick. Another one had a stroke and can't figure out how to use an ATM machine. A third has inoperable tumors, a fourth lost a son to drugs, a fifth suffers the daily pain of worry over a homeless child in a distant city. Somebody else weeps for a dead pet, another for a dying parent. As for me, don't get me started. I've already lost too many loved ones to list here, my only sibling is a physical wreck in a nursing home, and my once-perfect body is falling apart bit by bit. And I'm one of the healthy ones!

So stop begging me for a handout, please. Stop with the pathetic cardboard signs at every intersection, the constant phone calls and email, the piles of junk mail clogging my post office box. Jesus Christ, shut up already! 

I'm begging you.