I just got back from shopping and the card reader at the checkout tried to shake me down for a cancer donation. 

It didn't say were it was going, it did not tell me if someone was taking a cut out of the donation or anything.  I opted to not donate there because I don't need their help donating to charity...I know how to do it myself.

I had heard about the shakedowns for tips at the self service checkouts but this donation one is new to me.

 

Anyway  when I was a young kid my parents and grandparents would take  me to visit my great grandmother in a nursing home and it was full of all kinds of gross and icky smells.

Over the years I learned that most of the smells are diseases.  I can identify a few diseases by their smells.

Parkinsons is a particullarly vile and pervasive smell.  Cancer has a smell too and I can smell it on peoples breath.  I learned what it smells like because three of my close relatives died from it.

I remember the first time I recognized it on someone elses breath and said yada yada yada ".....because you have cancer" and she said "No, I don't.  My husband died from it".   I saw her again about a year later and she was on the verge of tears because she had just learned she had cancer...I bit my lip and didn't say anything.

What's my point?

Well I have two.

1.  Before you donate on one of those self checkouts find out where the money is really going and find out how much of a cut they take for "helping" you donate your money or just donate it yourself cause you really don't need their help.

2. Learn what those gross and icky smells really are and you can tell which diseases some people have.