Time is better than stuff
Not long ago, I read the following item on an organization's website as I researched a story about charitable giving:
"Your gift of four soccer balls can replace a makeshift banana leaf ball or rounded wad of trash for an energetic boy or girl."
If you donated $32, it said, you'd be buying four soccer balls for four children used to kicking around plastic bags or wadded-up T-shirts.
I thought about my daughter's playroom, where a soccer ball and at least four other balls reside alongside piles of stuffed animals, miscellaneous blocks, plastic figurines, puzzles, books, dolls and other toys, many of which seem to require batteries to function.
And now whenever Biggest Toy Sale of the Season ads -- of which there appear to be at least one per week -- arrive in our mailbox, I flip through the photos of gadgets and think about the boxes of toys we'll be unwrapping in a few weeks so we can put the old ones in the toy box and scramble to make room for the new.
