More than a Dead Fish

My daughter is almost seven. Today she discovered that her fish died. She had had Lily, the fish, for two months, since we gave her as a gift after my daughter had a stint in the hospital. My daughter cried. She wanted to keep the fish in the tank. She didn't want to let her go. Eventually, we said our good-byes as we dropped Lily into a drain leading out to the Charles River. The sadness was great; my little girl's still not accustomed to death. But this sadness was appropriate for a seven-year-old. My daughter's doing fine.

Somewhere else today, a girl not much older than my daughter was sold by her impoverished family to work in a factory, or as a maid. The agent then brought her to another town where she will be raped and imprisoned in a brothel full of other girls her age, where she'll eat small meals, watch TV, sleep on a hard cot, and await another night of rape and abuse. Her captors will earn a few dollars and her abusers a type of perverted pleasure and power. This is not age-appropriate. It is a sadness no girl can or should bear.

It needs to stop.

I ran four miles tonight and saw that one of my neighbors had dropped by a twenty for the cause.

Ran - 4 miles
Biked - 17 miles
Benched - 7295 pounds
Raised - $65