Lesson #4: Give a Little Bit

My parents are no dummies – it didn't take long for them to learn how to get me to surrender and comply to whatever was asked of me, and do so with minimal complaining. All it took was the promise of food.

Go to swim lessons at the YMCA? Buy me a TV dinner at the grocery store on the way home.

Go to baseball practices and games and give it my all? Reward me with drive-thru junk food for each great play.

Go to Tuesday night Pentecostal church services that could range from anywhere between three to six hours? Give me a $2 spending spree at any fast-food chain afterwards. (Hey, in a time when McDonald's hamburgers were just 49 cents, two bucks was jackpot city.)

I'm not kidding. For better or worse, I'm that easy.

That agreement extended to volunteering, which is something for which my mom has always strongly advocated and hammered into my brother and my brain. Whether it was Ehrler's ice cream in Louisville or something salty and greasy from just about any establishment with a drive thru, my mom knew how to tug at my heart stomach strings and lure me in to whatever volunteerism she lined up for us, be it working at a soup kitchen, picking up carelessly disposed trash along roadsides, or feeding hungry soldiers.

Look, I'm not gonna lie and say I did any of these things out of the goodness of my heart. Quite contrarily, it was solely for the promised food that followed. So even in volunteering, it was all about me, me, me. Or at least that's how each volunteer opportunity started.

A couple hours in to serving plates of hotdogs and Ruffles chips or stabbing at old, littered Coke bottles, after my initial childish complacence finally wore off, the feeling that my not-exactly-voluntary labor might yield a reward greater and more satisfying than fatty calories for my spoiled self would indubitably sink in. Did I want to go into that soup kitchen and prep food for, and make small talk with, a bunch of homeless people who looked "funny" and smelled "funny"? Nope. Did I want to walk up and down a highway and make someone's irresponsible litter my sudden responsibility to clean up? Not in the least. Did I want to go all the way to Louisville every other Saturday night and spend hours setting up the same rows of chairs for, serving the same meals to, and hearing the same jokes and performances for hundreds of uniformed men and women as part of a ministry program to appreciate those in the military? God no. Absolutely zero of any of those things sounded remotely appealing. My time would be better spent watching a movie or building a town out of Legos.

That's how I felt beforehand. But then when I unfolded my arms and took my stuck-up nose out of the air and actually got to work, a conflicting feeling overtook me time and time again: I felt small for always thinking I was above meaningful work that positively impacted others, yet I felt big because I was contributing – willfully or otherwise – to something that was bigger than me. I thank my mom for that, for coercing me to give my time and efforts to others, for allowing me to see what my contributions could produce, especially in conjunction with others' contributions.

My mom didn't stop there, however. With her checkbook (my dad, too) she loudly demonstrated the equal importance in giving – and doing so cheerfully – from a monetary perspective, that organizations that serve and contribute deserve financial support from those of us who are blessed enough to provide such funds – and that true giving is giving because you want to and not because someone in power mandates it.

This isn't meant to be a self-righteous, hey-look-at-me statement whatsoever, but as a Christian, I'm an ardent tither to my church, because I feel led to, blessed to, and confident enough in how my church uses those funds to serve the many needs in my community to know that they're doing right by the money I offer up. Now, if you don't believe in tithing, or if you find the organized assembly of people before God to be evil and corrupt across the board, that's cool – there is a plethora of non-religious ways in which you can contribute your time, sweat, and/or money to people, charities, or other organizations in need.

She might not know she did, but my mom successfully taught me how giving in any facet is a privilege, something of which to be appreciative to even be able to do. It's an honor to give. I know that because the elated feeling and general satisfaction afterwards can't be matched.

And for the record, I haven't changed much; I'm pretty much a meal's bribe away from doing or attending just about whatever dreadful thing you want me to.