Every year for many years, I’ve given non-perishable foodstuffs during the Boy Scouts of America Scouting for Food campaign. The bags to fill are left at the doorstep, in my area on the first Saturday of November, and they’re picked up the following Saturday and the donated goods given to local food pantries. It’s a good deed that helps more than one person who might need it right now.
The very first year I donated food for this drive, it started out with an accidental purchase. There had been a sale on a particular company’s soup at my grocery store and I grabbed a bunch of cans of my favorite variety, at least I thought it was my favorite variety. It turned out there were two cans of clam chowder in my rapid snatch and purchase and if ever there were a wrong soup for me to buy, this was it. Clams, oysters, and mussels will send me to the hospital for treatment of a food allergy. The clam chowder was side by side with my favorite soup and the pictures on the label are similar. Okay, if I had actually read the label, this never would have happened. But, my tradition of giving might have waited for a later year, too.
Yes, I could have taken them back and exchanged them for what I wanted or gotten a refund. I’m a receipt-keeper from way back. But, my shopping day happened to coincide with the first day one of those bags showed up attached to the knob of my front door. Soup was one of the items on the list they were looking for, so into the bag went the clam chowder. But, those two cans looked so lonely sitting in that bag by themselves, so I added more in the week that followed. By next Saturday, the bag was robustly full and my two cans of clam chowder had lots of company by the time they were picked up and it made me feel good knowing that my mistake was helping someone else.
Since then, I always had a bag waiting for a Cub or Boy Scout to come pick up and, in my own grand tradition, there’s always been two cans of clam chowder in the mix. There's always been one bag, but I always try for two. For a few years, there were as many as five food-filled bags waiting on my porch. The year they didn’t drop off a bag at my house, I left them two bags with a big Boy Scout logo printed out and attached so they wouldn’t miss it. The year someone forgot to collect bags along my street, I picked them up and dropped them off at the central collection site. I’ve reminded and cajoled people into helping with this worthy effort. I’ve blogged about it (like now); my words aren’t read by many, but if they encourage somebody to fill the bag with donated food items rather than throw it away, then my blood, sweat and tears of composition weren’t wasted.
This year, things are pretty lean for me. I’m not working and need help putting food on the table myself. But with the little money I had, I managed to put together a bag of food items for my local troop to scout for. I bought things on sale, I bought store items, and I even went without a few things so that I could do this. It’s important for me to remember that, no matter how bad I think it might be, somebody needs this help more than I do and if I can help, I should.
And I did.
And yes, there were two cans of clam chowder in the bag. You can’t break with tradition.
