Handouts

 Les Saints donnent l’Aumône, les Bourgeois seuls font la Charité.

                                               --Léon Bloy, Exégèse des Lieux Communs (nouvelle série)

I remember when our kids were in Head Start—and how it entitled them to a series of rather random charitable giveways.  One of them was a free jacket, courtesy of “Operation Noel,” a charity drive sponsored by one of the local television stations.  The jackets were cheaply made, not really warm at all, and worst of all, they were all the same garish color and design.  That meant wearing one was like wearing a scarlet ‘A’.  You were immediately identified as a “poor kid.”  Needless to say, you never saw a child wearing one at Head Start, or later at our kids’ elementary school, but that wasn’t the strangest part.  What was really weird was that you never saw them in any of the local thrift stores, either.  I really have no idea how, year after year, those tons of shoddy coats, including the ones given to our children, just disappeared.

     Another freebee they were entitled to was a ticket to a toy giveaway held before Christmas every year.  Unlike the jacket giveaway, participation was voluntary.  The toys were of pretty poor quality, but were good as “supplementary toys,” especially as our kids were still small and not particularly discerning.  The giveaway was held at a local Boy’s Club and involved my wife or I standing in line outside for a couple of hours in the cold.  (I remember that a friend of my wife was visiting one year and seemed a little shocked by the wait.  And she was living in Nicaragua just after the revolution.)  For some reason, enormous quantities of two toys kept showing up at the giveaway every year: plastic batmobiles, and pillows crudely printed with Hulk Hogan and other professional wrestlers.  There were also bikes, but when we asked if our kids could have one of them, we were told that they were for “other kids.”

     “However, we do have these lovely Hulk Hogan pillows . . .”