I’m just saying…

I don’t know if you’ve ever had any sort of extended stay in a hospital. Given the odds, you probably have. And if you have, you know how fucking miserable it is. You’re lying there or otherwise confined to a small space. You’re worrying about your health and don’t have much to distract yourself with. Because worrying about your physical well being is not something anyone likes to do. If it’s something internal, that you can’t see, it’s worse. Because you can’t gauge, and you don’t know if the pain is actually what’s going on inside of you, or what you imagine the pain will be. If it’s something mental, it’s worse than that. Because then you’re really not in any sort of condition to judge whether or not you’re ok. So you’re stuck in the hospital, or the wing, or the ward, or whatever part of that house of healing. You’re stuck. You can’t leave.

You’re lying in bed awake because you can’t sleep. It hurts. It hurts. Whatever you’ve got it’s painful. And you’re lucky if you can get up and get a drink of water on your own. You’re lucky if you’re not confined to that bed, strapped to God knows what. You’re lucky if you’re conscious. You’re lucky if you’re not in a terminal condition. And sometimes, you’re lucky if you’ve even got one more week to live.

Now take all that, and imagine you’re a child. During Christmas. You know that millions of other little boys and girls are going to wake up and find a bounty of presents under their Christmas tree and let loose a wrapping paper-flinging jubilee. You know that instead of being home with your loving family, who you miss very much and you know misses you, you’re in the hospital. Healing. Idling. Waiting.

And if you were a child at any point in your life (odds are you were), then you remember what a big deal Christmas or your other winter gift-giving ritual was. You remember the unmitigated joy that was not sleeping because you couldn’t contain your excitement. You remember that one year you almost caught Santa. You remember the magic behind leaving cookies and milk out for him (and carrots for Rudolph), and discovering in the morning they had been appreciatively eaten. You remember what it was like discovering that Santa isn’t real, but then realizing it was your parents buying you all the toys and that showed how much they wanted to see you happy. You remember making huge wish lists that could never be totally fulfilled (I mean, c’mon… a pony? That’s a stretch). You remember Christmas Magic.

Now imagine you’re a kid, and you’re being denied all of that. You know you could have it, but you’re stuck in the hospital. And you’re miserable.

Without Presents.

Without your family.

Without Christmas.

That’s what this charity is all about.

Please give.

(Auctions and stuff coming soon)

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 4th, 2005 at 3:09 am and is filed under Webcomics, The Bigger Picture, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.