Tag Archives: service

Service Club Annual Appeal

17 Feb

Dear Prospective Donor,

As you likely know, the Repairing the World Club at our school sponsors and annual service trip to an area in need. In recent years, our eagerness to serve has carried us to the mucky jungles of Nicaragua, to the barren expanses of Kenya, and even the bracing foothills of Nepal. In all of these places, the value of our efforts could be easily seen in the gracious smiles of those we were helping.

Keeping with tradition, our trip this year will occur in a region of tremendous need. Allow me to paint an image in your mind: The piercing cracks of street violence echo through fetid streets. Mothers cry out  for their children as the innocent youth shriek in anguish. Friends and neighbors spill blood for mere scraps of food, and sometimes resort to consuming each other when there is nothing else to eat. The wounded trample the throats of the fallen as they run toward dusty and crowded hospitals, praying that the untrained doctor’s blades will be swift as he haphazardly amputates. Over this chaotic scene presides a cruel and merciless tyrant who spits in the faces of his subjects from his gilded throne.

Clearly, Toronto has problems too endemic and overgrown for the native people to handle. The Repairing the World Club has to extend a life-rope to those drowning in the cesspool of Toronto with this year’s mission trip. Unfortunately, traveling to this remote and dangerous locale is prohibitively expensive. We require your financial assistance to bring the gift of charity to the Torontonians.

This trip will challenge the integrity of our determination and our capacity for empathy. We do not know how it feels to live and work under the world’s most whimsical mayor. We can not begin to understand the harshness of winter in the most efficient municipality at snow removal. How many tears have been shed in the cleanest city in Canada? How many dreams have been shattered living in America’s hat? How does it feel to pay more for hospital parking than for healthcare?

This year in Toronto, we resolve to make a change. We resolve to to empower, we resolve to engage, and we resolve to resolve. Resolving to resolve cracks in our resolve will resolve things in need of resolving. You too can be a part of this magical giving experience with a check made payable to: “The Repairing the World Club Beer Party/Paintball Retreat Fund”. We thank you in advance for your generosity.

Sincerely,

Alexandra Moraine
Fundraising Chair
Repairing the World Club
Beer Party/Paintball Retreat Committee

Don’t Forget to Tip the Waitress

15 May

(Scene is a crowded diner. Waitresses bustle to and fro. A party of one [a very mediocre party if you ask me] sits down at a booth. A waitress tends to him.)

WAITRESS: Hello, welcome! Can I start you off with something to drink?
CUSTOMER: I come here pretty often, I know what I’ll have to eat as well.
WAITRESS: Oh, I’m sorry, I’m new here. It’s my first day. So, what will you have?
CUSTOMER: I’ll start off with a house salad.
WAITRESS: With which dressing?
CUSTOMER: What are my choices?
WAITRESS: You can choose to have a dressing, or just the vegetables with nothing on it.
CUSTOMER: I’ll have Thousand Island.
WAITRESS: And what do you want for your entree?
CUSTOMER: I’ll have the fish.
WAITRESS: Really, the fish? In a place like this?
CUSTOMER (blank stare): Huh?
WAITRESS: Oh, sorry. It’s just so easy to forget you’re supposed to sell the food. It is my first day after all.
CUSTOMER: Let’s actually make that a steak sandwich.
WAITRESS: Sure. Umm, could you point that out on a menu?
CUSTOMER: I don’t know where it is on the menu, I just ask for it. I get it all the time.
WAITRESS: That’s okay. Could you just explain the dish to me?
CUSTOMER (condescending): Well, it’s like a piece of steak. On a piece of bread. A steak sandwich.
WAITRESS: So is that a hamburger? With steak on bread?
CUSTOMER: No, it’s like a steak sandwich. Just tell the cooks my order.
WAITRESS: I’m sorry, but I don’t really know how to communicate this to the chef.
CUSTOMER (exasperated): Really? You could just say, like, “Un sandwich de bistec para la cliente allá.”
WAITRESS (laughs): No, they speak English. It’s just I can’t quite figure out how to describe a steak sandwich without making it sound like a hamburger.
CUSTOMER (putting his face in his palms): You know what? Just call it a hamburger.
WAITRESS: Great! One hamburger. Would you like fries on the side?
CUSTOMER: Sure.
WAITRESS: Regular, crinkle cut, waffle, or pancake?
CUSTOMER: Waffle.
WAITRESS:  I’m sorry, we can only serve waffles past noon because it’s a breakfast item.
CUSTOMER: Waffle fries are a breakfast item?
WAITRESS: I’m sorry, you can only order from the dinner menu now.
CUSTOMER (confused): Wait, can you not serve waffles or waffle fries?
WAITRESS: Um, let me ask: (yelling across room) Hey, Shelley! Can we serve waffle fries now?
SHELLEY: We don’t even serve waffle fries here!
WAITRESS (to customer): I’m sorry, we don’t have waf-
CUSTOMER (testy): I heard. Crinkle cut is fine.
WAITRESS: Ok. And would you like any extra maple syrup?
CUSTOMER (confused): For my steak sandwich?
WAITRESS (frazzled): Oh, no, I’m sorry. I just keep seeing waffle and it throws me off.
CUSTOMER (upset): Could you just go put my order in now?
WAITRESS: Yes. One hamburger with waffle fries coming right up!
(The waitress leaves without the customer correcting her. She returns 55 minutes later with a slab of raw meat between two waffles.)
CUSTOMER (quickly): Take that back. I refuse to eat it.
WAITRESS (alarmed): What? Why?
CUSTOMER (irate): Why? First of all, two waffles does not a steak sandwich make. Second, the meat is completely raw! Where did you even get raw meat like this?
WAITRESS (meekly): I saw it next to the grill, and I just thought that’s where the cooks put the food for us to take it out.
CUSTOMER (snarky): Did you ever think, that just maybe, it was there so they could grill it?
WAITRESS: I didn’t know! It’s my first day.
CUSTOMER (exhausted): Could you please just take this back and cook it to medium rare?
WAITRESS: You want me to cook it to medium rare? I don’t really think I’m qualified. I’m just a first-day waitress.
(The customer does not justify that comment with a reply. Shelley calls from across the diner and the waitress goes toward her.)
SHELLEY (yelling to waitress): Did you just serve that man waffles? You know we can’t do breakfast items past noon!

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