By Georgie Bright Kunkel

Lately my incoming mail has become saturated with requests for donations. Since my late husband was active in saving wildlife, my email is still bombarded with requests for donations to save every form of wildlife known to be threatened. I know, you have heard from me before on the way the great middle class is the target of requests—saving our wildlife, saving the whales, saving whatever, you name it. The latest plea is money to save the yellow billed cuckoo.

For some reason the middle class, so called, seem to bear the brunt of requests to shell out for charity at every turn. We, the great unwashed of society, have been through down times and are sympathetic to the ills of all humanity. The people who have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, so to speak, have once been in my shoes. They are prominent enough to sit together on the Shark Tank and offer tidbits to struggling entrepreneurs who probably remind them of their own past lives. It must feel good to struggle through poverty and then make it bigtime. These rich people love to sit like kings and queens as they wave their wands providing support for the struggling new kids on the block with the chance of becoming rich like they are.

Yes, it takes all kinds to make up a world filled with such diversity. Sometimes it is amazing to contemplate how this world produced such a variety of human creatures that have to compete for goods and services. At the same time that the affluent upper crust are enjoying the good life, there are other segments of society who suffer the harshness of not having enough to eat or a decent place to sleep at night. City living includes the activity of the huge stadiums where the archaic sport of bruising football is carried on while in other areas tent cities are filled with those who are not able to pay for decent housing. I remember my mother telling me about my father who died before I was born. She said that whenever he saw a homeless person wandering the streets he would remark, “There but for the grace of god go I.” That has always stuck in my consciousness to this day.

Even as a very young child I wondered about the world in which some have plenty and some have very little. I wondered how a world could evolve with suffering alongside of pleasure and contentment. To this day I am so glad that my life is being lived in a so-called civilized country of law and order and some semblance of caring for those in need. I am so thankful that my mother was intelligent and hard working and could provide sufficiently for a family of ten children. I could have been one of those unfortunate ones who grew up as a slave or who lived where women did not have equal rights as women do in this country.

Yes, I am thankful that I grew up being true to my own nature and not afraid to express my own talents and interests. On Wednesdays each week I go dancing and since the women outnumber the men I have not been afraid to dance alone. I don’t sit at the table waiting for some man to ask me to dance. I have not been afraid to appear on the comedy stage along with most others who are much younger. Because I have not been afraid to use my comic talent I was chosen to be on America’s Got Talent when it comes to Seattle in February. Let me know if you catch my comedy act when the show airs.
And keep on laughing, you hear?

Georgie Bright Kunkel is a freelance writer who can be reached at 206-935-8663 or gnkunkel@comcast.net Note: You can also catch my comedy at the C and P Coffee House on January 28th at 7:00 p.m..