Sure, They SAY 70% of Communication is Non-Verbal...

You can smell it in the air... stale beer and acne medication. That's how you know this year's crop of first-year students is in town, settling in for, y'know, school and... stuff. Today, all the street corners are dotted with Shinerama volunteers: 17-to-19-year-old standing at every intersection, collecting money for Cystic Fibrosis research. Some of them have rigged up boxes on sticks so that they don't have to step out into traffic: they just poke out the box, and drivers roll down their passenger windows and throw money in. Problem is, I'm a luddite withour power windows, and a pickup truck I can't reach across. So at every corner on my way into the city, I'm making this exaggerated rolling motion with my right arm, and hoping that they'll understand that the motion, coupled with my pained "I'm-sorry" grimace, means, "I don't have power windows, so I can't give you money right now, but I feel really, really guilty about it!" and not, "I'm a miser and think charity is for suckers!" Fianlly, finally, I'm headed down a quiet street and I see more Shinerama kids. I pull over, reach across the gigantuan cab of my truck, roll down the window, hand them all my change, and I explain my predicament and ask that they stick one of their Shinerama stickers to my passenger window, thinking that would help explain things on my way home. And it would have too, except that on the drive home, all the Shinerama kids were on the driver's side. Sigh.