Be careful when classmates ask you to do them favors.
A couple classmates of mine asked if I would stop by the Beach Auditorium and give them any announcements our professor might make after they left.
It seems they were volunteering at the “Up ’til dawn” fundraising event for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and they had to be there by 6 p.m.
I agreed and, after doing a little “research” of my own at the Nugget, dropped by to deliver their messages.
I wasn’t surprised that other friends from notorious groups like La Raza and Associated Students, Inc. were there stuffing envelopes.
After a few minutes of friendly banter (and getting signed up for a donation-seeking mailer), I went back to the sign-in table. Once there, this eager guy said, “Your mustache would be perfect.”
The two young women working the table chimed in, “It would be great for our contest.”
They told me about a Cal State Long Beach mustache contest/fundraiser, where combatants could do anything they wished as far as shaping, dyeing and otherwise decorating their cookie dusters.
I’ve used my soup strainer for many things in life. I can’t remember never having lip shade. My facial caterpillar has served as a tool, as a sieve and as a toy over the years, so why not put it some greater social good?
After filling out a form and being handed a collection cup, the table volunteers handed me a card with the picture of a little girl named Grace Rosa.
I rushed back to the newsroom to check my e-mail before heading for home and this strange thing happened to me: I read the back of the card. It’s strange because, as a writer, I rarely read, but that isn’t the strange occurrence. I’ll come back to that.
The mini-bio on the back the card informed me that Grace Rosa, a four-year-old from Puerto Rico, “suffered from a constant fever and pain in her legs and hips” since she was two. Doctors had found a seven-inch tumor in Grace’s chest and determined she had neuroblastoma, the most common form of cancer in children under two.
Doctors at St. Jude’s removed the tumor, successfully the cards reads. Grace lives with her mother in Puerto Rico, but has to come back to St. Jude’s every four months for follow-up treatment.
I turned the card over again to see the shining face without hair in the photo. Literally, Grace is bald. The card doesn’t indicate if she’s bald from chemotherapy or, perhaps alopecia, but her smile I imagine could light up a hospital.
The strange thing that happened to me was that I found my mustache had other uses I had never considered. It not only can be used to help sick children from far-away lands, but it works as an umbrella. My face fur kept me from tasting the salty tears that streamed down my cheeks while reading Grace’s story and looking into the beautiful eyes in the picture.
I probably won’t do much with my mustache in the form of competition because, face it, there’s some pretty magnificent mustaches on this campus to contend with.But I have a donation cup sitting on my desk and it’s getting some money.
My challenge is that whenever you see somebody on campus with a fantastic mustache and a St. Jude’s donation cup, put something in it.
Duke Rescola is a senior journalism major and the opinions editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
