The Warmth of Donation

Little Fatty was holding the pocket money he had saved for half a year, ten yuan, wrinkled and sweaty, as if it was a treasure just dug out from under his pillow. He walked to the donation box, tiptoed, and carefully slipped the money in.

“Thank you, little friend, you’re such a loving and good child!” The staff member, a middle-aged woman in uniform, praised him with a professional smile on her face.

Little Fatty scratched his head and smiled shyly.

“Oh, only ten yuan?” The smile on the woman’s face instantly disappeared, replaced by a disdainful expression. “Who donates ten yuan these days? How stingy!”

Little Fatty’s smile froze on his face, and he lowered his head, looking at his toes.

The woman did not notice Little Fatty's disappointment and continued, “These days donations are all done by scanning a QR code. Look at those people, they scan one hundred, two hundred, even a thousand! Your ten yuan won’t even make a splash.”

Little Fatty felt his cheeks burning, and he took his hand out of his pocket, turning silently to leave.

“Hey, wait!” The woman called out to him, “Since you’ve already donated, you have to register, right? Otherwise, we can’t record the money.”

Little Fatty walked back and watched as the woman took out a registration book, titled “Charity Donations Registration Form”. He saw many donation amounts: 100 yuan, 200 yuan, 500 yuan, 1000 yuan…

The woman pointed to the blank spaces and said, “Name, age, donation amount, home address, fill them all in.”

Little Fatty took the pen and filled in his name with careful strokes. He was about to write his age when he stopped. He felt silly. He was clearly doing a good deed, so why did it feel like he had done something bad? He hesitated for a moment, and in the age column, he wrote “99.”

The woman was taken aback by Little Fatty’s age, but she quickly returned to her disdainful expression. She said, “Little friend, don’t fill it in randomly. How old are you really?”

Little Fatty did not speak, but silently filled in the remaining information.

The woman took the registration book, glanced at it, then looked at Little Fatty. She said, “It’s strange, how come kids these days like to pretend to be old? You, at ninety-nine years old, are quite fashionable.”

Little Fatty pursed his lips, turned around, and ran away.

He ran all the way home, entered his room, closed the door, and opened his piggy bank. Inside were the pocket money he had been saving for a long time, mostly coins, and a few wrinkled bills, totaling no more than a few dozen yuan.

He counted the money and then turned on his phone and searched for “donation”. He saw that there were many donation channels online, and the donation amounts were all hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands. Looking at those numbers, and then at the money in his hand, he suddenly felt that he was just too insignificant.

He turned off his phone, and emptied all the money from his piggy bank onto the table. He carefully smoothed out all the wrinkled bills and coins one by one. Then, he put all the money into a small envelope, and on the envelope, he wrote a line of crooked words: “For people in need”.

He put the envelope into his schoolbag, and the next day, he gave the envelope to his schoolteacher, asking the teacher to pass it on to people in need.

He felt that he had done something very important and his heart felt warm.

In the evening, Little Fatty was watching TV. A news report was playing, exposing a corruption scandal at a charity organization, where the donations had gone to unknown places. Little Fatty watched the news and suddenly felt that the ten yuan he donated today was perhaps the most meaningful.