"Charity" Original Air Date 12/02/01
Chapter 303

For the first time ever, we didn't do anything, yet Mom felt the need to punish us. She gave us a choice: help old people or help poor people. Reese went with old people until I described the smell that would surround us. So off to the old church we went to help its charity collect donations for the poor. I guess it could've been worse, but we started getting jealous when we realized that the stuff people were throwing away was way better than our own stuff. We're poor!

This week there were a lot of firsts. For one thing, this was the first time Reese's ideas actually made sense. He devised a plan that allowed us to trade our own stuff for the goodwill stuff, as long as it was of equal or greater value. This way, instead of one poor person getting something new, two poor people do. And we're poor! Everyone's a winner!

So we started trading: backpack for backpack, toys for toys, shoes for shoes. It was great. When we told our friends at school about it, they wanted in on the action too. But they started giving us money for stuff. Reese figured as long as we give the money to the collection plate that they were going to sell the item for, we could keep the rest. I think things started to go wrong when we started selling the stereo equipment out of our bedroom. We finally started feeling guilty, realizing that this was by far the worst thing we've ever done. So I told Dad. After he came to, he decided to punish us on his own without telling Mom. Good choice, we thought. So we had to sneak everything back into the church, only Dad's car broke down on the way and he began selling the items on the street. And then he got arrested! This seems to be happening a lot lately.

When we got home, Mom was being really nice. We couldn't figure out why. She cooked us a good dinner, and she was even smiling. Why? Well, she took all of our stuff and gave it to charity. I mean ALL of our stuff. We were left with only two sets of clothes. I guess we learned a little about materialism and of course the more valuable lesson of fencing high-end electronics!