I generally support the law that requires high school students to perform a required number of hours of community service in order to graduate. I think it’s a good idea for a number of reasons, the most recent reason (and my new favourite) being as follows: yesterday, the doorbell rang while Mike and I were making dinner. Mike went to answer it while I continued to keep an eye on the stove. I heard some mumbling coming from the front hall, which Mike returned to the kitchen to inform me was a young guy asking if we wanted to support the Heart & Stroke foundation, “a great cause to help people who can’t afford strokes.”
That scenario is ripe for a lot of discussion about kids today, with their rock and/or roll music, their sideburns, their frequent and persistent lack of global understanding, and the fact that most of them only get involved in their communities when it’s required by law, but I’ll leave it at this: it’s a good thing that Mike was the one to answer the door, because I’m afraid that if it had been me, I would have fallen over laughing and then given the kid all the money in my wallet.
I think kids our days were just as stupid… we were just better than everyone else… 😉
Yeah, that “when *I* was a kid …” thing has been around since Cain & Abel first appeared on the scene, methinks.
At Starbucks, we sell this thing called Ethos Water, the proceeds of which go to help kids in Africa. We had a poster at one point that showed how some of the kids in Africa had to walk x number of miles every day to get fresh water, and one day, these stoner kids came into our store, looked at the poster, and said “doesn’t that make you NOT want to buy that water? Those kids have to walk SO far just to get it…”. Your post reminded me of that.
Another reason I am so not cut out for retail – how do you not spit in the latte of someone who says something like that? (Or at very least refuse to give them extra foam or something.)