Friday, December 3, 2021

An Adorable Plush Crippled Kid

  

A television commercial came on. Sad music played over footage of elephants (mothers and babies) ambling through the wild. The earnest narrator said elephants are in big trouble. She said their very existence is threatened. But, she said, I can help save them if I sign up to make a monthly donation to this charity whose mission it is to save the elephants. And if I sign up to make a monthly donation, the charity will send me an “adorable plush elephant” as a token of appreciation. It was a cute little stuffed animal intended to make me feel warm and fuzzy about donating to save the elephants.

And then another television commercial came on. Sad music played over footage of polar bears (mothers and babies) ambling through the wild. The earnest narrator said polar bears are in big trouble. She said their very existence is threatened. But, she said, I can help save them if I sign up to make a monthly donation to this charity whose mission it is to save the polar bears. And if I sign up to make a monthly donation, the charity will send me an “adorable plush polar bear” as a token of appreciation. It was a cute little stuffed animal intended to make me feel warm and fuzzy about donating to save the polar bears.

I could see where this could easily turn into an addictive and expensive hobby for me. I’d sign up to make monthly donation after monthly donation and receive cute little stuffed animal after cute little stuffed animal to add to my adorable plush menagerie. Save the whales? Save the porcupines?  Somebody stop me before I donate again!

And then another television commercial came on. This one didn’t have sad music. It featured a couple of smiling crippled kids. It seemed their very existence was threatened, too, but they were much more cheery about it because they knew they could count on people like me to save them by signing up to make a monthly donation to a children’s hospital whose mission is to save the crippled kids. And the crippled kids said that if I signed up I’d receive an “adorable” gift as a token of appropriation.

I was psyched to call the number on the screen and make my pledge right away because I couldn’t wait to receive my adorable, plush, stuffed crippled kid. It would be the crown jewel of my impressive collection of species I helped save.

But it turned out that the adorable gift the crippled kids were offering was just a blanket. Can you believe that? A goddam blanket!

Those crippled kids have to do way better than that if they expect to be saved. 

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