Good deeds

Rachelle and Rian run this organization called Columbia Community Outreach, where one day a year — this Saturday, in fact, — lots of Columbia students and groups head out into the city and volunteer their time on various projects. According to the massive amounts of literature of gotten about the event, these projects include "playing squash with kids, restoring fireboats, planting flowers and beautifying our neighborhood parks." Now, Rachelle and Rian are running the event, so they're asking pretty everybody they come in contact with whether they've signed up for CCO. Rian, in particular, seems to have this idea in her head that I'm some sort of misanthrope —imagine that!— and she's crusading with extra vigor to get me to sign up.

She'll fail, of course. It's cause there's nothing in it for me. I know, I know, that's an awful thing to say about doing charity work, but it's true. Thing is, I like that warm and fuzzy feeling that comes with doing something nice for somebody as much as anyone else does, but this is just too much of a risk. See, you can't sign up for a project per se, so I couldn't sign up to restore fireboats, say. You have to sign up for a "team," because there's no 'I' in "volunteer," and on Saturday morning, your team finds out what lucky sons-of-guns get your Ivy League help. Here's the best part: if you're like me, and you have an 'I' but no team, you can sign up as an individual and be assigned to a dreaded t-word.

Just a side note here — will people please not tell me to stop moping and make new friends? Like with the senior dinner thing, I had to sign up as an individual (surprise, surprise), and now I've gotta hear from people, and from Mom, "Well, you can make new friends with the people you're sitting with." Blank stare; I restrain myself with difficulty. Um, people... if I could make new friends, then I wouldn't be in this predicament. Assholes.

Anyway, you're randomly assigned a project, rather than picking what you want to do. Rachelle assures me that there are reasons for this... many of the organizations CCO-ers will be helping out don't jump aboard until the last minute and others only want a specific number of students. I'll assume you're smart enough to figure out all the ways in which this system is incredibly stupid. But suffice it to say that restoring fireboats actually sounds pretty cool, and who knows, maybe they'd even have a volunteer thing working with animals (that doesn't involve picking up crap after them), and I'm kind of irritated that I'd have to play this roulette game to sign up. After all, who the hell turns away volunteers?

Also, if anybody wants to join me starting up a volunteer group that finds flaws in people's plans and products, then expounds on these flaws in a condescending, cynical manner, let me know.