Uncharitable

I have something horrible to say.

There’s a charity that involves being nice to dying children and I hate it.

It horrifies me and it saddens me. Not my own reaction. The charity itself horrifies me and saddens me.

A friend of mine approached me, knowing that I am charitably minded, knowing that I spend a portion of my yearly income on charities, specifically to help women and children, and she asked me if I would help out.

I’m lucky that her initial request came in the form of an email so she couldn’t see my face.

The charity raises tens of thousands of dollars every year to send dying kids to corporate theme parks.

I could not have thought of anything more cynical if I tried.

Tens of thousands of dollars for airlines, theme parks and marketing; all driven by the image of dying children.

Bald children.

Skinny children.

Big eyed, bald, skinny children, almost all of them Caucasian toddlers.

I read through the plea, felt a little confused and then did some online research.

It turns out that you don’t have to be actually dying, much less a toddler. The one she wanted help with was to send a young man of sixteen to a specialty camp that any kid would have loved to go to.

And he wasn’t dying. He wasn’t even sick. He just happened to be under the age of 18 and had previously been diagnosed with an illness that could have been fatal, even if it wasn’t.

And those are the rules.

And corporate donations to this charity get the same tax breaks as to charities that support research to cure disease, or offer the struggling parents of the actually dying help with bills, or a place to stay near hospitals.

But this charity just sends kids to corporate theme parks on regular air planes.

I’m lying, they also do something else.

I got another email asking if I would join her for a day of helping terminally ill children go shopping.

Because kids can’t think of anything they’d rather do to celebrate the season of peace than to go shopping.

Our kids can’t think of anything else.

Even when they are dying.

That’s our legacy to them.

They want to shop.

It makes me ill.