The Wrong Way to Do the Right Thing

There are good things to do in the world and bad things. In my personal life, I tend to pick the bad. Recognizing this limitation, I decide periodically to offset this with great acts of kindness. So inevitably, I'm out there collecting trash and being environmentally sound and mentoring young people and generally just trying a bit too hard...

Now that I've settled into my job and the demands that are typical of it. I have decided to re-up on my commitment to help everyone in sight, whether they want to or not. To that end I've been checking out some of the community service organizations in NYC and what they have to offer.

I hit the NY Cares orientation program a few weeks ago. I walked into the jewish community center on a Sunday, grabbed a form and sat in the back. The fact that it was 70% women (ages 24-27) did not escape my notice. I did my best to supress my glee. The Orientation coordinator was a volunteer of 10 years who showed up in a really good mood for a sunday morning. His openning comments were innocent enough about the opportunity to do the world some good and how inspired he is when he's done with his saturday reading program.

Over the course of his presentation though, he began to pepper his comments with slightly off color comments. For Example:

"And I mean look around you, do you want to do these great things with some of the beautiful people."

Later, he said something like "and if I like you and you can't get a date here, then I'll help you out I have 3 single daughters, ages 21-30"

I was dumbstruck...This guy was completely out of hand. people are here, hung over and droopy on Sunday morning trying to redeem the sins of the past weekend, not accelerating the their opportunity to repeat these past mistakes. The hell?

When he closed by encouraging everyone to mingle and sign up for stuff together, I seriously began to question this fellow's interest in reading to academically under performing minority children.

Later, I went to orientation for God's Love We Deliver. When I was a kid I remember the one commercial they did, where a dude would run up the stairs and give a big box of food to a drag queen dying of AIDs. Wait, did I make that up?

The orientation was reasonable enough, a mix of kids, older people and 20 somethings, somewhat disproportionately gay, looking to cchop potatoes to the beat disco music in a judgement free environment.

The orientation coordinator took a different tact. He focused on what was amazing about helping others and some of the demographics of the people we could be helping if we stepped up, put on our flashiest, fishnet shirt, got our groove on and chopped some potatoes. Over the course of the discussion he mentioned that he was divorced recently. He sighed heavily and presed on with his presentation.

Towards the end he got very honest and said that he used God's Love We Deliver to help him thru the toughest part of his divorce finding himself working 4-5 shifts in a week, or basically every night. Right, he's not at all missing the point...