The Starving Children

Sarah and Charlie are collecting money for Operation Rice Bowl, the annual Lenten collection to fight hunger in developing nations. Sarah has been enthusiastically collecting money for this cause: "collecting" every coin she comes across around the house. She keeps producing coins and asking if she can put them in her Rice Bowl, and I keep having to ask her where she found them to figure out whose unwitting donation it was.

Yesterday I came home from work with two dimes in my pocket. I handed them to her and said, "If you can tell me how much this is, you can keep it." She got very excited and said, "These are dimes, right? Twenty cents!" I said right, and she trotted off. She came back with her own personal piggy bank and prepared to drop them in.

"Sarah!" I said. "Wait! I thought that was for the starving children!"

"Well, " she smiled, "I'm a starving child, so I guess it is."

It took me a moment to realize she wasn't making a joke, as she again prepared to drop the coins in her bank.

"No, I mean the real starving children."

Charlie walked in. "I'm starving too. When's dinner?"

Me: "No! Operation Rice Bowl!"

Sarah: "Oh! Those starving children. ... Well how about one for me and one for them?"