Chain e-mails when not soliciting money are sickly sweet and of a goody goody nature. Thus the following chain-mail never made it
Good Deeds For You
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- Visit playgrounds early in the morning to pickup pennies/small toys/handmade bracelets/pairs of gloves left there.
- Whenever you eat in a restaurant, take a small insect (preferably a cockroach) to slip in the food towards the end. Appear horrified and complain to the manager. Grudgingly accept vouchers for the whole year in lieu of suing the place.
- Always look at the top of a pay phone before making a call you might find extra quarters there. Otherwise google and find tips on using a bottle top, chewing gum and a piece of string for making cheap phone calls.
- Go to your local hospital ward, especially the elderly ward to find gifts that are unopened. Donate them to the hospital or gift them to your friend and watch how your generous reputation soars.
- If you see an elderly person sitting alone in a coffee shop, be sure to catch their eye and smile. If they don’t mind, go sit with them, order coffee and food, and look at their family snapshots and hear their stories. A lot of elderly people save up their pennies just to go "outside" and sit with other people. Make sure they get their money’s worth!
- Do remember your mother. Make her the queen of your life. Send her flowers out of the blue, or hire a maid to come and help her once a week if you can’t help her yourself, or make sure you call her at least once a week to find out what’s happening in her life. It really makes all the difference when you drop in with your laundry.
- Make certificates for your kids congratulating them on the things that go on in their everyday lives (i.e., it doesn’t need to be an earth shattering event). Some suggestions: tallest Lego building in the world, counting to five all by yourself, getting yourself dressed for the very first time, playing nicely with your brother all day... etc! It’s free and cuts costs associated in buying toys.
- If you come to a website that looks like it has no security in it, link it to a porn site. Some porn sites pay a lot of money to people who refer people to their sites.
- Get new magazines from the doctor’s office. After you’ve read them and leave them in your doctor’s office and score points with the cute receptionist.
- Ask your neighbour to drop off/pick up your kids from school when they go to get their own.
- If you buy a lemonade/ garage sale item/ box of Girl Guide cookies etc. from kids, pay them much less than what it’s worth (i.e. a dime for a dollar item) and insist on the change. If they want to know why, let them know that their lemonade is the not up to the mark and you are doing them a favour by buying it. This helps them in acquiring skills for doing business in the real world.
- Ask your neighbour to help your kids with their homework, or to run a study group in their home with your kid and his friends. Offer to do the same and make excuses when your time comes.
- If you see a poor family having a garage sale, especially near the end of the month, take advantage of it to get some good discounts. They need the cash anyway so you will be doing them a favour. If there’s stuff left over try and get a bigger discount.
- Always carry jumper cables, extra gas, extra water, and a first aid kit in your car. You never know when they’ll be needed by a cutie whose car has broken down.
- Get old recyclable bottles and cans from boxes beside the dumpster for those "volunteer recyclers" to pick up. Old clothes are good finds too. These can be resold for a tidy profit at the junk dealer.
- Keep cough syrup and drops, analgesic and tissue packets in your office desk just in case. Its sad how many people have no choice but to come in to work, even if they’re very ill. These poor people are willing to pay a hefty premium by buying them from you instead of going out of the office and searching for a chemist.
- Save the unwanted seeds from your garden and give half to your friends. That way, you can all share the same “friendship gardens” next year... and make sure that you have fresh food on the table.
- If you’re trying to get some information from a company rep/ government official etc. and not getting anywhere, get angry at them. A good kick up the butt works wonders in making them do their job well.
- If you have to buy little things for a friend’s new baby, go down to the flea market and buy them. The clothes are beautiful, and usually sold dirt cheap.
- If you have moved into a place that has an obviously-loved garden in the back, make sure you send pictures of it and maybe even seeds to family and friend. Acknowledge the tributes to your "green thumb".
- If you are moving, take the furnishings from your old home... like the tp in the bathroom, hangers in the closet. Anything that helps you save some money for the new home.
- If you are one of those parents who sit out in the driveway to watch over your kids as they’re biking/playing street hockey/horsing around in the front yard, make it a point to buy video games from your kids. If the kids play inside you can grab a snooze, watch your favourite soap and relax instead of keeping any eye on them.
- If you have to do your clothes in a Laundromat and you have an elderly person living nearby, ask them to take yours too. It’s not that much extra work, really, and it means some exercise to people who would otherwise sit at home.
- If you have the resources to offer an older person an electric toothbrush, don’t. Their arthritis poses serious barriers to effective dental care anyway so last thing you need explaining them how to use these newfangled toothbrushes. The best kind of toothbrush is the good old fashioned one.
- Go see a movie. It’s much better than reading. Ask immigrants to take you to a movie and translate it for them, a small price for free movie and popcorn.
= Pick up the litter on your way. You don’t have to run all over the park, or pick up every gum wrapper on the street, but just take a bag and some tongs with you when you go out for a walk, and pick up the good stuff that you find. Some people are careless to drop their wallets and purses. Believe me, it makes a difference!
- Race your toddler, and lose. Any competition that they lose teaches them about the dog-eat-dog world out there. Prepares them for adulthood.
- Always cook double. It doesn’t take that much extra effort, and you can freeze it for next week. Saves you some cooking on another day!
- Be patient. I know this seems like a small deed, but it really requires a great deal of effort! The next time some transit stranger falls asleep on your new blouse, drooling, or the idiot at work loses yet another of your valuable files, use the occasion to learn patience. You can get revenge at the time and place of your choosing.
- Teach your child to not share by never dividing your food with him/her. Make it into a game so that they don’t cry.
- If you can afford it, go to the pound/animal shelter and pick out a cat that doesn’t look like it stands a chance. Pay for the cost of putting it down. Rid the world of the mangy beast.
- If you are going to buy medicine for you or your child, buy two. I dunno how many times my neighbours have come over unexpectedly asking if I have something simple like a fever reducer or arthritis painkiller and have been incredibly grateful when this small thing was there! Plus you can charge then double.
- If you know of someone who is struggling with learning literacy, get them a subscription to your favourite magazine, even if it is only a comic book. Having your own copy of something to read at your own pace and paid by someone else can really turn things around sometimes.
- Go out every morning to make the rounds of your neighbours, if you have the time. It doesn’t need to be too involved; just a friendly ‘Hello, I was just passing by your door and thought I would invite you for a walk’ is good enough. Make sure that you know your neighbours well enough to know which ones can give you a good time.
- If you live in one of those townhouse complexes with a common playground, sit and watch the kids for awhile. Notice which kids need new jackets, pants, shoes etc. and then quietly tell your kids to avoid them.
- Carry referral cards for your favourite dentist, doctor, community nurse or chiropractor. If you talk to other people at all about their health, chances are that you’ll be handing out at least one of those cards a day to them. Everybody’s looking for good medical care! Make sure you follow up by finding out how they are later. And never forget the commission from the dentist/doctor.
- Scare your children into sleeping, and see how they go to bed. Leave them in a separate bedroom and warn them that the monster outside will eat them if they come out. This lets them make the choice to sleep by themselves. Don’t worry they’ll be fine.
- Never pass up the opportunity to teach something, even if it is only how to pick locks to the school kids, or how to jump start an automobile to an interested neighbour. Its funny how quickly your know-how gets passed on to others, and others after that! There is no measure for how much a small act of goodness can multiply throughout the world.
- Casually mention to that two-job family that you like to mend clothes, if you’re handy with that sort of thing. This always gets neglected, and being as appearances do count for something and clothes are so expensive these days, a quick little stitch in time could do a lot of good. And with two-jobs they can afford to pay you.
- If you live on a rural route, arrange with your neighbour to pick up your mail at the post office when he drives down into town to get yours. No sense rattling down in two cars to get one handful of mail!
- Get some sidewalk chalk. Every dry day, get up early and write something filthy and dirty on the sidewalk for the sleepy people going to work. This works for school kids, too!
- Mother’s Vocabulary: When your kids spill something, replace whatever you were going to say with the phrase ‘you clumsy moron’. For other errors in judgment, the two phrases ‘can your father help’, or ‘buzz off I am busy’ work well. Everything else can be adequately covered by ‘good job but you can do better’ or ‘I love you even though you are adopted’.
- If you want to sit down and rest, invest in cable TV. Your kids will not trouble you when their shows are on. If you have to do something, teach them how to use the remote. If you don’t have to do anything, watch TV with them.
- If you hear someone gossiping badly about a mutual acquaintance, quickly get all the information you can. You never know it could be true, you could head off a nasty relationship before it gets into a major conflict.
- Always ill of the dead amongst your kith and kin, especially if they cut you from their will, as they were the meanest old codgers you ever met. Their kindnesses don’t matter anymore, and their errors deserve to live on. Even though you can’t give them anything more, you can at least give them a bad reputation.
- Never stick up for strangers. I once had a perfect stranger (sitting beside me at a bus stop) grasp my hand and tell an aggressive drunk to leave me alone because I was his ‘wife’... thanks for nothing dirtbag, whoever you are... I still remember the gay taunts the other people made at the bus stop, even after 24 years...!
- Make a list of all the kindnesses people have shown you over the years. Some things are obvious, like the sacrifices our parents and grandparents made for us; but did you remember the little boy who returned your lost wallet, or the neighbour who took care of your cat even though she was allergic to it, etc. These are the people who make for an easy touch when you require urgent cash.
- Never forget unkindness regularly. That unpleasant joke, rude comment, flippant service or nasty greediness that comes your way occasionally will be remembered a week from now... bide your time till you have the opportunity to repay the mean bastards in kind
