School Fundraising Volunteer

OK. I am way past the discomfort stage about sitting in a meeting where most of the players are women and all the real men are at work somewhere else. I've been a reverse commuter in most things for most of my working life, the odd man out, a Mr. Mom picking my daughter up after school, a guy who always has enough time to stay late at parties and meetings and who never feels compelled to leave any social function early. I walked home reeling a bit this morning after a development office meeting for annual fund volunteers. The women were well-heeled though not off-puttingly so, and while they or their husbands could buy and sell me a thousand times over, I find that I know enough to help the group and even inform those running the meeting. But I'd rather be the silent one who carries a big stick, rather than the running mouth.

What makes me squirm in my seat is the woman with four kids in the school who pays full fare, the better part of $100,000 per year in after tax dollars, from her checking account or the number of people contributing over and above that amount to help the annual fund. Here am I, volunteering to make calls, and I am too old for this. Not the calling per se, just the precariousness of my finances. Here am I, thousands of dollars overdrawn in my bank account, over ten thousand dollars in arrears with tuition, and without a source of income or a job. Despite my awareness about the alumni fundraising business, I remain among those in the group who always talks a big-seeming game, while writing miniscule checks, or none at all. I am smart, but I am poor. I am a socialite WASP, but I am a swamp Yankee. I am going to find a way around the mortification and humiliation of this predicament, somehow, because it makes me seem hollow for the moment. It does not exactly boost my fragile self-esteem, which is always at a hazardous level. I am like a house built upon a wet, semi-flooded basement, its foundation on the verge of a disastrous collapse.