October 2009

Fundraising From Hell

I want you to think back to when you were a kid.  Do you remember “No Soliciting” signs on the front doors of businesses and houses?  It was a different time before email and websites and eight hundred television stations.  There were actually door to door salesman that would walk around trying to sell you stuff because it was one of the ways available to get their product in front of you.  It actually was so prevalent that people would get pissed from having their front door bell rang all the time, they put these signs up giving you fair warning not to knock on their door.  I can still remember my father slamming the door in the face of some guy from Greenpeace way back when.

When we signed our son up for little league, you had to assist the league in fundraising.  This was done by having each family sell a box of about twenty candy bars.  You either take the time to sell the candy bars or you pay an additional forty dollars cash up front for the registration fee if you want your kid to play baseball.  We take the chocolate bars and walk around the neighborhood once and sell maybe one or two candy bars.  What are we gonna do with the rest of them?  You give it three or four weeks and they magically disappear into my mouth, my wife’s mouth and my kids’ mouths.  Now, we’ve eaten all the candy and have to pay for it.  Good grief! 

The door to door salesman still exists but in a different form and for a different purpose.  They are all cute little boys and girls walking around the neighborhoods in some kind  of uniform or another with freckles and ballcaps or ribbons in their hair.  The typical for sale items are magazines, wrapping paper, popcorn, candy and cookies.  It’s the perfect scam getting the children to do the dirty work for all of these organizations that supposedly need money and it’s high time it stopped.  It’s the same old sob story with the teacher’s, the schools, the pta, the girl scouts, the cub scouts and so on.  If we don’t fundraise, then programs and activities are going to be cut.  I’ve been hearing this same old tune for a long time and it never seems to change and the programs and activities always seem to grow and never diminish.

The ultimate question is where does all the money go?  Do you remember the director of the Red Cross here in San Diego whose salary was $400,000.00 per year?  You ever notice there is never an accounting made available of what the funds are for?  What’s the cost of the actual goods being sold?  Whose really benefiting from the proceeds?  How much of the proceeds actually ends up at the local level?  When did this become the children’s responsibility to do this?  How much free labor did these organizations just receive from us and our kids? 

I know a lot of you think I sound like a curmudgeon.  What put me over the top?  The schools sure do seem to send a lot of papers home with the children.  Usually, my wife reads all of these papers and I never looked at them until recently.  My eight year old daughter brings me a piece of paper saying I have to fill it out because she has to return it in the morning.  It’s an order form to buy books.  The schools’ and the teachers’ are now peddling books to the children through the classroom and I have to fill out a form saying yes or no.  Why can’t they read the books at the school?  Isn’t the library good enough?  Shouldn’t our taxes cover this?  Please don’t tell me some kid isn’t going to learn how to read if I don’t help out.

Do people question things anymore?  Are we all so busy in our own lives that we don’t notice the slow transformations that have taken place incrementally over time?  Are we all ever going to stand up and say no to some of this stuff or are we too afraid of conforming and keeping our mouths shut?  I sure have a lot more questions than answers.

I won’t slam the door in your face, but the answer will be a polite, “No.”

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It’s Tough To Be A Fan

During my formative years,  we lived in Dallas, Texas from when I was four years old to about eight years old.  At some point during this time, I developed an interest in the NFL.  I was a big Cowboys fan during the days of Roger Staubach, Drew Pearson, Tony Dorsett, “Too Tall” Jones, Hollywood Henderson and others.  The Cowboys were a great team to root for.  They were in the Super Bowl five times during the 70’s and won it three of those times.

We moved to southern California in 1976 before the dawn of Air Coryell.  We lived on a wide street in Pacific Beach.  All the boys of the neighborhood would get together everyday after school during football season and play two hand touch in the street.  It was sandlot football on the hardtop and a lot of fun.  We would even play at school where we had a nice green field to run around.  Since we had soft grass, this is where we played tackle and the game wasn’t football.  The game was “smear the queer.”  Could you imagine this happening in today’s world?  The noon duty would have had us all in the principal’s office for being too rough and for being haters.  We would have probably had to go to some gay and lesbian sensitivity training.

Fast forward thirty three years.  I have been a Charger fan since the late seventies.  I’ve been through the Air Coryell years and the Bobby Ross era to the hardass Marty Schottenheimer years.  There has been a lot of bad football throughout the years in San Diego, but there has been no tougher time to be a Charger fan than the Norv Turner era.  I don’t have a lot of time being a husband and father of three, so the only football I usually can squeeze into my schedule is the weekly Charger game.  However, these games are so hard to watch.  It always seems to be a lack of focus or preparation surrounding this team that you want to throw your bottle at the television screen.  This team has so much talent but always seems lackadaisical.  Lack of focus and preparation usually points to a lack of leadership.

What to do as a fan?  Well, my son started playing high school football.  I was so looking forward to attending his football games and also start attending the varsity games on Friday nights.  My son and I decided to attend the freshman game this week because a good friend of mine coaches on the freshman team at La Costa Canyon.  We sat  and watched La Costa Canyon rip Rancho Buena Vista  in a 48-6 total domination.  I have nothing to do with these players and coaches, but I was embarassed sitting in the stands.  I think the score would have been 96-12 if the La Costa coaching staff didn’t start subbing in second and third string players. 

At half time, the RBV coaches made the kids do wind sprints as punishment for their poor play.  This really pissed me off.  I wanted to go down on the field and make the coaches do the wind sprints.  The boys on both teams are all fourteen and fifteen years old.  They all come from similar socio-economic backgrounds.  They have similar practice facilities and by rule they have the same amount of practice time.  Why such the disparity on the field?  Leadership.  You can’t blame it on the kids.  The kids are there of their own free will and playing for the love of the game.

I didn’t even bother going to the jv or varsity games.  It was a clean sweep by La Costa Canyon and granted they have a great football program, shouldn’t the games at least be competitive?

I’m not even going to bring up San Diego State.  What an abomination!

Maybe I’ll become a 49′er fan, I love that Mike Singletary guy.  That’s leadership.

It’s tough to be a fan.

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