I’ve never won any prizes for my fund raising abilities. I do not like
fundraisers - don’t like asking people for money. Neither do I like being
forced to do things I don’t want to do. And, I refuse to use salesman tactics
to guilt someone into a contribution.
So, when the powers that be at my small high school, decided to sell
candy bars as a way to raise money, I was disinterested. And said so. Of
course, no one gave any consideration whatsoever to anything I had to say.
The day the candy bars arrived, I came back from lunch to find four
boxes of them at my desk. I said something about declining to participate and
was told that wasn’t an option. Everyone had to take at least four boxes to
sell. With a twenty-five per box count, that meant I was supposed to sell one
hundred candy bars! Not a likely scenario.
I asked what we should do if we didn’t sell them all and was told to
bring back any unsold candy at the end of the fundraiser. That was all I needed
to hear!
The candy sat at my house for two weeks and I didn’t sell a single one.
When the fundraiser was over, I returned all of them - minus the four I’d
eaten! Actually, my mother had sold four or five of them, so I suppose I should
say I returned most of them. At any rate, the folks at my school were not
impressed.
They shouldn’t have been surprised. This wasn’t the first time I’d
demonstrated I wasn’t the fundraising type. They’d tried to get me to sell a
number of things - unsuccessfully. And still they didn’t learn.
A few months later, someone at the school came up with the idea of
having a jogathon - a lot like a walkathon, only faster. This I could do, I
thought. I did like running.
The way it worked was, instead of having a set distance; we would run
around the track for three hours. Our sponsors would pay according to the
number of laps completed in that time. Apparently, this new idea of a
fundraiser had been designed with me in mind. Everyone knew I liked to run and
despite being considerably shorter than most, I was fast and had a lot of
endurance. I was then, expected to win. They even offered incentives - first
through third place prizes for the most laps completed and thus, the most money
raised. Bribery. That’s what I called it.
I did win - in a way - tallying up one and a half times the number of
laps as the next closest runner. Everyone was excited and making a big deal out
of the fact, I’d actually gotten involved. That is, until they looked at my
sponsor sheet, which I had dutifully turned in as required. It was completely
blank.
They shook their heads and stared at me. I’d run three hours for
nothing. “You didn’t get any sponsors?” one of the teachers finally asked.
“Uh, yeah, I sort of forgot about that,” I said. “But I did participate
by jogging. And,” I reminded them, “I did have the most laps.”
No, I didn’t win any prizes.
Rave Reviews Book Club
Featured Selection
Daydream's Daughter, Nightmare's Friend
by Nonnie Jules
_____________________________
Jennie Sherwin
Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books. Inside
Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of
Justice, and other titles, are available as ebooks on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon
Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®, Kobo, Diesel Books, and
Smashwords. His books are also available in paperback at most online retailers
or at www.bruceabordersbooks.weebly.com.
The popular Wynn Garrett Series Books are now available on Barnes And
Noble® at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/?series_id=867526
Bruce also serves as the Vice President of Rave Reviews Book Club http://ravereviewsbynonniejules.wordpress.com
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