Giving till it hurts.

Over the past 48 hrs I've had two interesting experiences with giving to others.

Unfortunately, both left a different (if not bad) taste in my mouth.

1. Yesterday I helped load presents into 4 separate vehicles for an adopted family that our office building took on for the Holidays. The family apparently consisted of a mother, a father and 3 children range from a toddler to a 12-yr old. Anyway, I was amazed and somewhat envious at the amount of presents, and food and clothes this family got. I donated at least $20 towards the cause, buying nice toys for the kids - assuming the whole office building (approximately 100 people) donated the same or more - the family of 5 received over $2,000 in gifts and food and clothes. That took 2 SUV 's , 1 truck and 1 sedan car to fill.
   
2. My next door neighbor 'dropped her phone in the rain' and asked if she could borrow my phone. In order to keep neighbor relations on the up and up - I let her borrow my cell phone in my apartment. About 20-30 minutes later, my neighbor has called her phone company but is still trying to find friends to pick her up because she doesn't have a car. Finally, she found a friend and was done using my phone...or so I thought. 2-3 hours later I get a knock on my door again and again I graciously offer to allow my neighbor to use my phone (thinking it was an emergency) yet over the course of her conversation with a few friends I noticed a) that she had not dropped her phone in the rain but in the toilet & b) noticed that my neighbor had no real emergency other than she was bored and did not want to stay in her apartment alone on a Saturday. I shortly 'invented' the need to call my GF ASAP.
   

Between these two instances, I am feeling less in the spirit of Tiny Tim and more and more in the spirit of Scrooge.

In my opinion, If you have two adults in a family, unless both are amputees - which I don't believe was the case - you should be able to raise your kids and put food on the table and modest clothes and toys for X-mas. I don't care if you both work two jobs in shifts to do it - It can be done and can be done well before you start begging strangers to do your X-mas shopping for you.

If you lose control of your phone, and need to ask the neighbor to borrow there's - common courtesy & manners says the phone calls on the neighbor's phone should be limited to emergency instances only. Which does not include "I have a strong urge to go to the club".

I guess the main reason I'm bitter is because I haven't yet gone Xmas shopping, and I won't be able to until late next week because otherwise I'll break my budget and be headed back towards indebtedness. Baa Humbug!