tellhimfred.com

We live in Boston, a large-ish city with a large concentration of people all living in a relatively densely packed area. People are everywhere you look in this city, and quite a few of them are generous individuals, myself included.

I was a high school student at one point, pursuing athletics as well as a musical track (they called us “band fags”) which meant fundraisers. Irritating and time-consuming, they often occupied weekend slots I preferred to use for playing Dungeons and Dragons, or watching Big Trouble in Little China for the fifty-fourth time. But when all was said and done, I was glad for the fruit sale, or the car wash, or the can drive, or the advertising drives - because they enabled us to take great trips, or have new equipment or hire a real bus to drive us to the games in Sandwich and Dennis and weird places like that.

One thing that not even the most deranged of parents would have been OK with, which seems to be par for the course now in Boston is the practice of sending your kids out dressed up in their athletic uniforms to panhandle.

When I used to work in Downtown Crossing, admittedly one of the most schizophrenic areas of town - it can’t decide whether it’s a dangerous place where you can get your kidney vented or a thriving consumer dristrict, I used to get accosted every day in the summer by some baseball team or other. In the same way that the greasy beard man would demand the change from my burrito at Tedeschi’s, (the east coast version of 7-11 - deal with it) these students who theoretically have parents and are receiving a viable education are fundraising for their team by begging for fecking change in the city.

So that’s fucked.

But as my better half and I were discussing yesterday, being approached on the street for change is small potatoes compared to the feeling of discomfort compared to being stopped at an intersection and having some dude knock on your window and ask for coins. It’s like being in your house and having someone you don’t know throw rocks at your window, and when you open it up they yell up to you “Hey, can I have some gum?” Discomforting to say the least.

This last Saturday the East Boston High football squad was out at the busy intersection near our apartment, looking all thuggy and hassling people in their cars for change. How is this even REMOTELY ok with parents and teachers? Do they know about it? I imagine that there’s some liability involved for the administratrion with having the kids fundraising for a school activity in fucking traffic.

Seriously, what do you guys think? Talk about it in the forums.