An Unwitting Dupe

I’ve come to realize that there was a time in my life when I was an unwitting accomplice for the mafia. I couldn’t help it. I was roped into doing their dirty work. But I forgive myself for what I did because I was duped. I wasn’t in my right mind. I found myself in a situation where suddenly I was in way over my head and there was no turning back. And besides, I was only about 8 years old.

That’s around the time when I was shilling for one of those humongous cripple charities. I did my job as their poster child. It wasn’t hard. I basically just had to sit there and be a symbol of tragic irony. I always felt very uncomfortable doing it. Something just wasn’t right about the whole situation. But I did it anyway because I felt the pressure of some unstated coercion.

Since then I’ve put it all together. I helped get mucho bushels of money flowing into that humongous cripple charity. And you can’t have mucho bushels of money flowing anywhere without the mob sticking their fingers in it somehow. That’s what makes the mob the mob. So maybe that’s why humongous cripple charities give me the willies to this day. And it’s not just humongous cripple charities. It’s humongous charities in general. I don’t trust Girl Scout cookies. There are mucho mucho mucho bushels of cash flowing there so you know there’s no way the mob can resist taking a dip. You can’t fool me with your dirty little cookies. It’s the same thing with that Kars 4 Kids. I’m not falling for that.

It’s all a front. Whenever I see a donation canister for crippled kids at a store checkout line, I picture the day not long ago when a sinister character set the canister on the counter and said to the proprietor, “I’m gonna leave this here to raise money for Jerry’s Kids, okay? After all, this is a real nice store. I’d hate to see anything happen to it.” And if the proprietor refuses, the next day he gets a brick through the window.

So even way back during my brief poster child reign, my eight-year-old consciousness knew something reeked, though I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. But I did my duty for fear that if I didn’t they might decide to make an example out of me and I’d end up in the bottom of Lake Michigan wearing cement shoes, along with all the other poster children who knew too much.

I did what I had to do to survive.