There are so many people who cannot participate it's not even funny. Like professional scuba divers. What are they supposed to do? Or those women who play basketball in high heels for Easy Spirit commercials. Or babies: they can wear sneakers I suppose, but not to work.

I understand the connection between finding a cure for prostate cancer and wearing sneakers to work. Who wouldn't? It's as plain as the nose on your face, or for that matter, shaving your head for kids with cancer, growing mustaches for youth literacy centers or dancing for AIDS.

But let's make these fundraisers a little more all-inclusive, shall we? Because by indicating to people with no feet that there is nothing they can do to cure prostate cancer, to bald men that there is nothing you can do for kids with cancer, for shy people that they don't care about AIDS, you are not only not helping, but you are alienating many people already.

I think I am going to start a general fundraiser for People Who Cannot For Some Reason Or Another Participate in Other Fundraisers. I think I'll call it Breathing for Disease. Everyone who gets sponsors will receive a set amount of money for every breath they take during a special one minute increment of the big fundraising day. They will receive a t-shirt and the sense of having done something good. I will give the money to a cause.

I know this is going to piss off the breathing tube contingent but they have their own fundraiser in their benefit anyway--swimming laps for breathing tubes.