I remember as a kid hiding below the windows in our home in an effort to avoid the Fuller Brush Man.
"Brush guy!" my mom would cry and my siblings and I would propel ourselves against the wall under the windows. "Quiet," she would whisper from her spot in the living-room, "we want him to think no one's home."
My wife and I have taken to re-enacting this scene recently. Only for us it's not the brush guy we're hiding from, it's the legion of kids patrolling the street and looking for saps willing to buy chocolate, magazine subscriptions or raffle tickets to fund their various activities.
Yes, it's fundraising season again, so watch your wallets, because a bunch of cute little kids will likely be showing up at your door wanting you to cough-up for their soccer team, the class trip, or some other equally deserving cause.
I don't know if it's just me, but it seems that fundraising has become ubiquitous: join any team, and sure enough, you'll be on the street hawking poinsettias to the neighbours.
When I think back to my childhood, the only fundraising that I recall doing was for charitable organizations. If I was on a team or doing a class activity, everything was covered. I wasn't expected to raise money to pay for uniforms or to pay for the bus to drive us to the aquarium.
I don't how all those field trips and tournaments were paid for, but I do know it wasn't me out shilling for funds. Nowadays, it seems organizations from school to sports teams rely on fundraising simply to run their programs.
In my wife's school, for example, there have been five separate fundraisers over the past month. One was for charity, but the others were for classroom needs from egg incubators to earthquake kits.
The problem with this, of course, is that it's the families that pick up the slack. It's parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents who end up paying for things they don't need or want to subsidize educational and sports programs.
It's not the fault of the schools or the teams; it's a function of a decade or more of downloading of costs from higher levels of government. And the reality is that it is just another form of taxation, a hidden user-pay system. It's also fundamentally unjust.
Last week I spoke to a teacher who worked with the Trek outdoor leadership program based at Prince of Wales Secondary. Their fundraisers regularly make up to $60,000 each, offering the students enormous opportunity.
In contrast, I went to the DRSS outdoor leadership burger and beer fundraiser this weekend, and I suspect that if they clear $3,000, they'll consider it successful.
It's hardly a level playing field, and it means that students in wealthy areas - like the west side of Vancouver - have more opportunities than a Squamish kid might.
Sometimes it makes me want to open my window and scream, but if I do, the little kid at the door might see me.
