Would you like to give a dollar to AIDS?

I happen to love the English language. It can be frustrating, confusing, contradictory, and often hilarious...

I was checking out at the Walgreens the other day when the sales clerk asked me, "Would you like to give a dollar to AIDS?"

I looked up at this twenty-something woman making no effort to mask her boredom with her minimum wage job and decided to fight the urge of my genetic code that made me want to answer, "Well now, I didn't realize AIDS was so poor." Instead, I went with the polite and probably much more socially acceptable answer, "No thank you, not today."

On my way to the parking lot I reprimanded myself for being such a know-it-all. (And maybe I cursed my college English professors a little bit for ruining me...) After all, I understood what the clerk had meant of course. She wanted to know if I would give my money to fund research on preventing AIDS, or to help develop AIDS medications, or to benefit AIDS patients... or to educate about AIDS... Come to think of it, I had no idea what she had meant. I only knew what she hadn't meant which was exactly what she had said. Oh, sweet sweet English.