This year, as in other years in the past, I decided to give a monthly, year-long donation to two charities in lieu of the usual gifties to friends and acquintances. While most of my professional life has been devoted to improving conditions for companion animals, in reality I work mostly with people, without question the most amusing, annoying, destructive, brilliant, social, aggressive, inspiring animal on the planet, so when I give to charities they tend to be human-focused. This year I’ll be reminded monthly on my credit card statement that I’m investing in http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org and http://www.operationsmile.org. I first started investing in people this way around 1980 with a monthly donation to another organization, but one too many drunken night of watching Sally Struthers whine coupled with the organization’s religious requirements ended that partnership pretty quickly, and so I moved over to http://www.unicefusa.org, where I’ve invested, with a few breaks in lean times, for over 30 years.
I went on my way, donating money and, for the last 20+ years, cooking monthly for shelters and hospices, until about ten years ago, when two things changed my approach to my monetary involvement in the charity biz: somebody invented Facebook, and somebody invented http://www.kiva.org. I do not think it’s a coincidence that they emerged at about the same time. 
It happened kind of like this: I’d already donated $25 a couple of times to Kiva, which provides micro loans to people who pretty much always, no matter how poor or desperate, pay that money back. One can then re-loan the returned money, and I’d been playing around with that fifty bucks for a while when suddenly someone said something stupid on the internet.
I couldn’t help it. I responded. I knew it was wrong. The person was clearly not too smart and was filled with the fire that is belief without valid proof. But Jesus – she was so nuts. And so wrong. So I did it, I provided facts, along with citations, that showed the error of her thinking, to which she responded, “I don’t need your “facts,” I know what I know, and I’ve been a dog trainer for over 10 years!”
Oh game on.
But as I pounded her theoretical brain into the figurative dust I realized something: I was being bad. It did not feel good to be arguing with someone who when faced with the ocean would still claim water only came from faucets. Sure, my actions were sort of justified – this was a public forum and she was disseminating incorrect information and claiming expertise. People were learning wrong, and that needed to be mitigated. But still…
So I went back to the list and finished the job. Then I gave $25 to Kiva. Yes, I had been naughty, but then I’d also been good. I’d been good because I’d been naughty. If my calculations were correct, I’d just discovered a situation in which IT WAS GOOD TO BE BAD!
I next realized the power of this epiphany in a Market Basket parking lot, a place well known for being overly crowded and filled with the worst drivers on the planet. A spot was opening up, and while the 800 year-old man slowly pulled out I approached from one side about a second after a woman approached from the other. The old man was pulling out so slowly that the woman started talking on the phone. By the time he finally vacated the space she was in full conversational sway. I waited. A second. Which, technically, meant that we’d gotten there at the same time. Then I took the space, got out, walked past her glares (noticed she had three kids in the car), shopped, went home and gave $25 to Kiva.
Then there was the annoying neighbor who approached me inquiring as to how many yellow flowers I was planning to plant, as yellow didn’t go with his house color. I planted 300 daffodils. I hear they spread. And the member of an organization I head who called me at home at 11:00 pm because she couldn’t figure out how to log in. I had her stick masking tape to the top of her screen so she’d stop putting her password in the Google search box. And the electrician’s assistant who kept getting lost on my first floor (there are only four rooms on my first floor), unable to find the basement door. I put blue painter’s tape along the wall and wrote “place right index finger here” and watched as he actually did that, following the tape to the basement door. (There’s a lot a person can do with tape.) And the many times I’ve hidden my son’s food just to watch him either search for it, or not quite be sure he made it in the first place and so make another plate. Or the time someone pissed me off, and so I called a dozen pizza places and ordered pizzas to be delivered every hour or so to his address. No way to know where the next one was coming from. No way to stop them. 
Or when an ex did something mean the night before his birthday, and so I sent him a $300 flower arrangement C.O.D. Or the time an especially short, particularly terrible cook member of the family was staying with us on the Cape (off season, so no quick food shopping to be done) and I moved all of the ingredients needed for her “specialty” up on a high shelf, way in the back, and agreed that yes, it was such a shame that she wouldn’t be able to make us her planned dinner. Or the time I sent my other son, who is morbidly afraid of dolls, a picture text while he was in class. I also duct taped her to his ceiling once. Not my fault he didn’t notice til the middle of the night.
I just checked my Kiva account (and re-lent $50 because I’m enjoying remembering the times I’ve needed to use it). To date I’ve made 71 loans totaling $2,000 (which counts re-loaned money, so the same $25 lent, say, four times equals $100) distributed in 25 countries. Minus the first few loans I made before I realized the potential of the situation, I figure that’s roughly 68 loans made through the Karmic Savings & Loan plan.
Just doing my part for the planet, I guess. And besides, if this ever catches up with me, I’m pretty sure there’s someone in Africa or Asia or South America willing to take me in for a while. I just hope they don’t piss me off. That shit costs a fortune.