ASKING FOR MONEY

Asking For Money

 Tuesday, May 24, 2011

     There is a fundraiser for the chorus I am in… People did great.  So many want to help… I just don’t do it…. I see nothing wrong in it, but I can’t do it.  They told us to ask 5 people for money and I don’t.  I try and remember that it is not for me personally, and it’s for this chorus I am in, but I still can’t do it.   I think of the nineties when I had a “holistic health counselor” insist I go to see a deity in Boston.  I have been to Boston to see her twice and this counselor got all my savings with her high price sessions and the tithes she now expects for her phone counseling.  She tells me that I must go and to ask people for the money, and I do.  I feel awful but I do it not once, but twice.  I write down every person with the date and the amount of money they gave me… In 1997, I stopped seeing this counselor.  But, I asked people 5 times for money.  Two times to see this deity, once, because of credit card issues, once my car needed fixing and the last time in 1997.   I then, slowly, start to pay people back.  First the ones that expected it, then the ones that don’t.    I want them to know that I don’t do things like that anymore.  I write a note with each check.  I write “Thank you” on the memo of one check and on the cancelled one it says, “You’re welcome.”  I am happy.  I go backwards from the first time I asked for help in 1993 and slowly pay each person back.  Every time I get paid, someone gets something.  Some folks I just can’t find.  One friend I paid was so excited.  “It came at just the right time. I never expected to get it back.”  I hear that more than once from people.  They just wanted to help me out.    They all help and I pay them all back.  My big thing is hoping these folks know that they were appreciated more than they can imagine and it was never taken for granted…One family I paid back thinks it’s just to help out and forget that they helped me… some people send me my checks back… One guy said it was a gift.  Another friend says the same.  My brother's friend Bill totally forgot and when he received my check, matched the "payback" money I gave him and gave it all to the Parkinson Foundation in honor of his mother, who had just died from this disease.  Some folks have no recollection of the money they gave me, but take my word for it. 
     One amazing person wants no part of me.  This was a favorite teacher of mine in Junior High. She was the best teacher I have ever had.  I never told anyone about this but I hadn’t seen her in years and asked for a lot of money to see a healer that was in town.  Again, my health counselor insisted.   "Who's the one person that believes in you?" … I don’t see her for years and I am asking her to fund a week long retreat with a healer…  First we were just getting together for lunch, and then I felt like I needed to tell her why I wanted to see her, so before our lunch date I called and left a message and told her the real reason.  When I didn’t hear back, I tried again and her number was changed to an unlisted number…. This was one of the most encouraging teachers in my life.   Even when I was no longer in her class, she came and saw me in the plays I did years later.   And I lost her.  That was 1997.  I haven’t asked anyone for money since then...