Don't Try to Help

Finding a volunteer opportunity is increasingly becoming more difficult than doing your own taxes or making cheesecakes. Perhaps because it's free labor and non-profits are immediately suspicious of anybody who wants to do something without being compensated.

Here I list the qualities that I have surmised volunteer coordinators are most wary of when considering volunteer applicants:

• Employed full-time: You work 40-60 million hours a week. They will think you are a workaholic who eventually wants to quit your well-paying corporate job to run their ESL program at the public library.

• College degree: You have completed college, congrats. But in the eyes of the volunteer coordinator you are more malleable if you are a high school student. Why? Because if you are in high school, you NEED them. How? Only the volunteer coordinator can verify your having sacrificed your time on their organization's behalf so you can put it on your college application and eventually get your college degree and never be considered for a volunteer opportunity ever again post-college.

• Advanced college degree: You have a Masters or PhD. You may as well have herpes. To the bottom of the volunteer barrel you go.

• Healthy social life: You have a healthy social life and spend time going out with friends in your community. Wouldn't your rather spend your Saturday at brunch with them over teaching a citizenship class to Somali immigrants? Very suspicious that you would choose the US Constitution over mimosas. Very.

• Disposable income: You make decent money, so why aren't you out spending it in your free time; why do you want to use your free time in a soup kitchen instead of at Costco buying luxury items like wine or a trampoline?

• Volunteer experience: If your volunteer experience is not in their niche field, meaning, previously you tutored disenfranchised youth with cleft palates but now you want to walk shelter dogs, your application will be dismissed. This is a trick question that you should always answer with a lie. After all, you have likely seen others walk dogs--the learning curve will not be too drastic for you, especially if you have (see above) a college degree.

• You are white: Checking the Caucasian box on your application indicates that you feel guilty for being born white and therefore are only a struggling writer who wants to seemingly help others while really only gathering experience for the eventual memoir you will write about working in a group home for the children of illegal Mexican immigrants who have been left behind when their parents were deported. You will probably even title your book, "The Ones Left Behind," and then quit volunteering once it makes the New York Times bestseller list.

I recently applied for an after-school volunteer position tutoring grade-school children. Upon reviewing my application, the coordinator wrote back to tell me that while they couldn't use me in the capacity in which I volunteered, they were looking for someone who could "tie balloon animals and teach clogging." Since I am not a Celtic clown, I declined this opportunity. But you know what, it was good to get a bite.

Peer Pressure

Something you never hear men say to their friends: "Hey, I signed up for a triathlon/marathon/race of some sort...you should too!"

And then proceed to pressure their friends into considering and eventually co-signing up out of either guilt or mistaken enthusiasm.

But women do this to one another, unabashedly, all the time.

Perhaps it's because every race these days is in the name of breast or ovarian or fallopian tube cancer awareness and because we all have these parts it’s assumed that we would like to run 26.2 miles so others are aware of them. I’m not sure. I wear a sports bra when I run so people aren't aware of my parts.

Recently I played tennis with a friend, who mentioned that she was doing the Ironman in 2 months and therefore I should too.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I haven't seen you in a while, c'mon, it will be fun to train together!”

This is always the reason female friends initially give— that training for a grueling event will be made fun because we will be together.

“I have to scrub my bathtub tonight; do you want to do it together? It will be fun,” Is what I want to say.

“You expect me to be ready to compete in the Ironman in 2 months?”

“Not just you, US, I expect US to be ready! Let's challenge ourselves otherwise we will regret it for the REST OF OUR LIVES!”

Another female ploy, regret.

“I have no interest in doing this.”

“But why? (whine) you can swim, you own a bike and you run. We would be doing this TOGETHER and you'd be so proud of yourself.”

“I am proud of myself.”

“You'd be prouder!”

“I'm already there, very proud. I'm an A+ paper on my own fridge.”

At this point pouting and frustration begins with the friend.

Soon it moves from it being about the race to it being about the friendship.

“Are you worried spending so much time training together would harm our friendship?”

“Yes, totally.”

“I promise I won't let it if you don't.”

“I am avoiding all potential of that happening by not signing up for the Ironman with you."

“You'd really sacrifice the chance to do the Ironman in order to save our friendship?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Wow! You really do care about me...US...our friendship.”

“I do, and not doing the Ironman in 2 months with you is my way of saying that I cherish this friendship.”

I'm Not Pregnant

After Tutu died, Poppie began spending summers living with my parents in their suburb, Frankfort, outside of Chicago. My long term relationship had ended shortly after Tutu died and so I also found myself spending summer, fall, winter, spring...and then another summer, fall, winter and spring living with my parents in their suburb outside of Chicago. I went from living a very cosmo life in downtown Chicago, complete with extravagant dinner parties with fascinating people, concerts and runs along the lakeshore to dinners with my parents and Poppie and a bottle of Charles Shaw wine from Trader Joe's (the best, according to my father), community concerts in "downtown" Frankfort on Sunday afternoon featuring the area's best harmonica player and runs along suburban streets, where my mother's friends usually stopped their cars to ask me mid-jog if I "needed a ride home?"

"You and I kid, we are in the same boat," Poppie told me when he noticed that I was in fact living with my parents, and not just spending the weekend crying and eating their food.

Beside the 60 year age difference, and the fact that they had been married 55 years, which trumped my 4 year relationship, I suppose we were. He had lost his wife and I my girfriend, or "roommate," as she was known to him.

"It's hard to live with someone," he said, wisdom which I was always tricked into thinking was intended to soothe me, such as grandfathers, by definition, are supposed to do with their grandchildren. But Poppie had a magical way of making it about him. "Tutu was a great roommate too, but she snored, so we didn't share a bed for 30 years, unless we had sex, and then we still didn't share a bed after. I am sure you know I have taken the drug Viagra."

Part of the expectation of living with my folks was that we would all take turns entertaining Poppie. Most men of his age are completely content with sitting in front of a television all day watching baseball. Poppie was content with sitting in front of a television all day watching baseball as long as he had an audience to distribute his thoughts to like a firehose at the same time. These thoughts could range from pronouncements about "colored people" to anecdotes about his difficult life growing up and eating squirrels to whether his toenail had a fungus and could you look. My father easily settled into the TV watching role, while my Mother took Poppie to the library or health club with her, where he sat in a chair and watched her swim laps and told her what she was doing wrong with her freestyle stroke. I in turn was Poppie Miscellenous. Going to the gas station, "Take Poppie!" Going to Starbucks, "Don't forget Poppie!" Going to a doctor's appointment, "Poppie can sit in the waiting room!" Poppie soon became Flat Stanley.

Because I genuinely loved the man, and knew that this was a unique and hopefully never to be repeated time in my life, i.e. living at age 28 with my parents and 80 year old grandfather, I occasionally planned outings I knew both Poppie and I would enjoy together. We went to mutually revered places like Kohl's, where I bought bras, and he, socks, and my bras. And Michael's craft store, which I liked because they had a 50% sale on frames, and he liked because his name was Michael.

Once, I took Poppie to the Chicago Bears training camp. Both being avid fans of the team, I considered this not only a fun time for us both, but one that I would someday look back on with sepia-toned nostolgia as I remembered us watching men crush one another as we sat together on the bleachers sharing an ice cream.

Poppie embraced the special outing. "The Bears will stink this year, why should I go watch them stink before it matters on national television?" But off we went, because my mother needed Poppie out of the house so she could spend time with my father sans one of the 300 baseball games that played in the house daily.

The special grandfather/granddaughter Werthers moment was quickly dashed when Poppie decided that there were too many people in attendance to see a professional football team and made a beeline for the exit after 20 minutes, purposefully or accidentally--we'll never know-- knocking over a pregnant woman who stood in his "way" with his cane as he strod towards the parking lot, while leaving me to explain to the pregnant woman's husband that my grandfather was senile and dying.

A few weeks later, I had to go to the grocery store. At the time, I was on a major health kick, (since over) and working out 3 hours a day, protein shakes, vitamins and looking awesome. I had read that prenatal vitamins were better for hair (Poppie had blessed his lineage with thin hair) and so I intended to head to Jewel, the local grocery store, and buy myself some prenatal vitamins.

"Take Poppie with you!" my mother cried out from her bedroom after I told her I was running out for a bit. I could have been going to freebase heroin, but after 2 months of Poppie All The Time, she could care less.

Poppie and I headed to Jewel, where I dropped my prenatal vitamins into the cart, along with a quart of chocolate Moosetracks ice cream and some carrots, which Poppie wanted to buy because they improved eyesight according to him and he was concerned we were all going blind because we complained about seeing the TV, which was turned to face him directly, rendering only a peripheral view for the rest of us. Blind it is.

A few days later, I arrived home after a late night at work to find my parents sitting alone in the family room. Poppie was nowhere to be seen and the TV wasn't on and so I briefly wondered if I was at the right house.

"What's up--where's Poppie?" I asked them.

"Poppie is in his room, but we need to talk to you," my father replied.

"Poppie has told us that you are pregnant," my mother said. While my mother supports my sexuality, I believe there was a small part of her hoping that I had randomly been knocked up by a man the day my grandfather told my parents that I was pregnant, after spying me buy prenatal vitamins for the thin hair he gave us all.