Freebies

Dear American Red Cross, National Wildlife Society, MDA, PETA, National Breast Cancer Awareness Association, St. Jude's, Juvenile Diabetes of America, Working Assets, Protect Our Forests group, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, the Artic Wildlife Fund, Aids Awareness, CF Foundation, People for Peace, the Democratic and Republican national parties, and Robert Redford:

Please stop sending me address mailing labels.

I appreciate the thought, but really, I'm good. I could mail eight letters a day from now until 2012 and still have leftover address labels. So hear me now. I do not know enough people to send letters to in order to use up my existing labels. Back off.

The problem is I feel too guilty to throw away perfectly good labels. So I ration them out. Outgoing bills receive the really ugly labels like the unnerving stare of the ostrich that was on the Nature Company label. Friends get labels with flowers and bunnies and hearts that I would never, under any circumstances, ever select for myself. Agents and editors get the no nonsense stark labels with name and address but no annoying animal or handdrawn pictures of purple tulips on them (thumbs up to the one or two organizations that sent me those).

I don't even give money to these organizations and still they send me free labels, increasing tenfold my liberal guilt. I will sign their petitions to save the penguins or tell Congress to just say no to government funded Dale Carnegie self-esteem seminars for trash collectors, and I'm sure this is what keeps me on the list. People went to all the trouble to print and mail the labels though, and they've got my name and address on them so they're of no use to someone else, so I figure the least I can do is sign the petition.

The WORST is when they include that damn nickel with some plea like, "We offer this nickel b/c we're hoping you're a good person and you sending this nickel back to us (along with a check for $49.95) would prove it. Please, please, don't let us down. The (fill in the blank - children, bunnies, artic wolves, Robert Redford) is counting on you.

I can't take the pressure! Is it any wonder I have trouble sleeping at night?