Sometimes I start writing a column without a clear roadmap of where I’m headed. Either ideas or events or observations line up for me on notepaper or in thought, and then I hit the keyboard and we’re off and running. But sometimes I don’t always know where that running will take us.

I was not particularly looking for a column idea this weekend when a series of events lined up saying “look at this.”

Saturday started out with a phone bill to pay. The phone company invited me to contribute towards a literacy program. I think literacy programs are terrific. I didn’t happen to know anything about this particular program so I took a pass.

Later that morning, I stopped in at the bookstore to make a book purchase. The cashier showed me a sample of children’s books that I could buy for a needy child. I love children’s books and I love the idea of sharing books with needy kids. It seemed like a swell idea but I was really there just to make a purchase and I didn’t know anything about the book program so I took another pass.

At the grocery store, while I was watching the numbers on the register, the cashier asked me to give a dollar to the food pantry. I support this activity but frankly, I was watching my own wallet at that moment. The solicitation for a charitable contribution while I was transacting business felt both out of place and like an interruption to the task at hand.

Sure, one can simply say “no” when asked, and that’s what I said to the cashier.

But the requests just wouldn’t stop. And the litany of “no thanks” I doled out made me feel stingy and uncharitable.

They say charity begins at home. That’s certainly where I learned about charitable giving. And that’s the base from where I practice charity. I think about the charities I support and make my gifts fit within my budget,

Saturday afternoon my wife and I shopped at a department store. We made purchases in four different departments. At each register we were asked if we had joined the discount purchasing program that costs $20 and which twenty goes to support a particular medical research. We didn’t want the discount card so that meant we had to conclude each of our four purchases with a polite “no thanks” on the $20 request. One cashier attempted to guilt us into the giving. She lectured us as she folded a clothing item and placed tissue around it. And boy does that approach put an interesting spin on an otherwise mundane purchase.

It didn’t seem right to argue with the cashier. Nor, did we feel the need to explain that we write an annual check to one of the high profile walks that support this same research. Nothing about the experience felt to be in the zone of charitable giving.

And so, here I am, without a roadmap and unclear where I want to go. I’m disquieted with the increasing barrage of charitable requests that are made at the makeshift pulpit of some merchant’s cash register.

Charity is a powerful force and a noble effort and charity almost always blesses both the giver and the recipient.

But if charity is a powerful force, then it is one not to be trifled with. And perhaps that’s where this path has taken me, the realization that charity is personal and not to be made into a marketing tool for merchants selling us their wares.

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POST THANKSGIVING THANKS to the memory of Aaron “Bunny” Lapin, the inventor of whipped cream in a spray can back in the early 1950s. Reddi-Whip, as it is still known today, was first sold by milkmen in St. Louis. What did the Pilgrims do without it?