My dad always said, if you want it to be, life can be more fun than a barrel full of monkeys. It's always fun, he would tell me, to see what happens after you've taken that first small step in the right direction.

Mid Island Unity Church regularly tithes ten percent of its monthly income to different charities in the community. A couple of months ago, instead of choosing that month's beneficiary themselves, the Board of Directors decided to give fifteen dollars to everyone attending church that day. We were to give ten dollars to our favourite charity and five dollars anonymously.

I chose to match the ten dollars given to me and donated twenty dollars to the newly formed breakfast program at Princess Royal Primary School. A couple of others added their ten dollars too so that first ten dollars grew into forty and, after I mentioned the program at my next Rotary Club meeting, they decided to apply for a special district grant that could add a few thousand dollars to the kitty - And, now that you've heard about the project, who knows how many of you may choose to kick in a few bucks too. Fun eh?

But I hadn't finished my assignment. I still had to make my anonymous donation.

After some thought, I decided to leave my five dollars with Brenda Aubin and the other cashiers at the Milton and Albert Street Superette. Over a couple of years of shopping there, I've often noticed people counting their last pennies to buy food. A friend of mine added her five dollars too.

A little while later, a middle aged man found himself with not quite enough money to buy a soup bone and a package of split peas to make himself a basic soup ... all he would have to eat that day. Five dollars can buy a lot of fresh vegetables at that store. So let's just say he ended up with a fabulously healthy soup, enough for several days. Some time later, the remaining five dollars helped a single mother in a similar situation.

Wanna have some fun? Perhaps you could find a store where your five dollars could make a difference.

When I dropped by the Superette last weekend, Brenda mentioned a Christmas tradition she grew up with. It seems her parents gave each of their kids a weekly allowance of fifty cents and week after week, they would each drop ten cents into a special Christmas box while their parents added another five dollars.

Then, a couple of weeks before Christmas, they would go to their church, ask for a family they could help anonymously. With a description of the family in hand, they'd hit the stores to buy special presents. Of course there would always be a fresh turkey, a Christmas cake and a lot of other food too.

"And when we were making our weekly contribution, my parents wouldn't just hold back ten cents from our allowance," Brenda smiled thinking back in time. "They'd always give us our full fifty cents and then we'd each add our own ten cents to the box. So we always knew we were playing our part -- And every Christmas morning, before we opened our Christmas stockings, we'd say a silent prayer for the families we had helped."

This column is not really about acknowledging our "heroes". It's about planting good ideas...and this really is a good one.

If you think you might want to start such a tradition in your family, please let me know at bill@nhero.org or by calling 741-7499. If we all worked together, I wonder how many families we could help next Christmas?