Glancing at her smartphone this Sunday, Taylor Carson commented, “Do you know what’s happening to people in Syria right now? I want to help but I have no idea how,” despite spending over an hour Googling “wine stain removal” the night before.
“God, this is awful. I can’t believe it,” Carson said before pouring herself another glass of wine. “I wish there was something I could do.”
Carson remained perplexed as to how to even begin aiding the cause, lacking the resolve that she’d drawn on in researching wine stains.
While Carson scoured the internet for wine stain removal tips, numerous highly regarded Syrian aid organizations were making the heart-wrenching decision to increase their Google Ad Words budget to make it even easier for people to find them and donate, a tragically desperate yet somehow necessary move that would divert money away from medical supplies for children.
“Being this helpless is a nightmare,” Carson lamented, as the terror in Aleppo escalated and the search browser on her phone sat idly in her bag, ready for its next mindless YouTube search.
Carson has donated zero dollars to organizations providing aid to Syrian refugees but she has rescued several blouses from persistent wine stains, despite totally forgetting the process of salt and boiling water after each incident.
After receiving another news alert on her phone Carson commented, “There’s this picture of a little boy being airlifted from the rubble, and it’s been burned in my mind for almost a year.” Carson, who during that time has Googled 5,743 things unrelated to Syrian refugee aid and 127 things related to “IMDB,” has never Googled the name of the Syrian toddler Omran Daqneesh, or learned that Daqneesh was treated by doctors from the Syrian American Medical Association, which in 2015 treated an estimated 2.6 million Syrians and accepts donations at https://www.sams-usa.net/. Their website is constantly available to Carson and the other 3.2 billion people globally who also have internet access but sadly does not contain any combination the phrase “red wine stain dried.”
Carson is resolute that she will “for sure” help the people of Syria when the opportunity presents itself. In the meantime, she is looking up dry cleaners on Yelp.
