Ice Bucket Challenges & My Two Cents

I was nominated. I didn’t do it. I didn’t donate either. I would like to thank my friend Sarah for the nomination, and for not shaming me when I didn’t respond to her nomination and didn’t complete it (I am not going to lie: there was no way I was pouring ice cold water over my head, for charity or otherwise), but I do intend to donate, when I can – some times are financially better than others.

I see people bitching about the Ice Bucket Challenges, and that it doesn’t actually benefit ALS. Of course it doesn’t! You could dump a bucket of penicillin over your head and it wouldn’t cure a cold. But that was never the point.

Someone has thought of something ‘fun’ to do (fun for who, I’ll never know – not me!) while drawing attention to a disease that needs dollars for research – and yes, all diseases need that. If that is your argument, go dump a bucket on your head for cancer! It’s not the dumping that matters, it’s the donating – just like running doesn’t cure cancer, and donating clothes doesn’t cure diabetes. It’s the funds raised from the DOING of those things that could cure cancer, and diabetes, and ALS, and every other incurable disease you can think of.

No, not all of the people who did it donated money. But you know what they did do? They donated their time to ALS. They helped bring attention to it and spread the word, which in turn probably garnered more donations. Certainly, fortunately, the letters ‘ALS’ have never been spoken more frequently in my life than it has in the last few weeks, so what does that say about the success of this challenge?

So before you go crapping all over people who are doing these ice bucket challenges for not getting serious about ALS, maybe the problem is yours. For me, there is no better way to get serious about something than getting silly over it first.