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BELATEDLY, poll Y anna TAMARA STADNYCHENKO In 1913, Eleanor Hodgman Porter published a series of stories about a little girl named Pollyanna. The stories were the inspiration for an early sixties Disney movie whose leading character, played by actress Hayley Mills, is an orphan whose missionary parents die doing good deeds in some unspecified foreign land. They leave their daughter to be brought up by a very straightlaced and proper aunt whose approach to life and people is aloof rather than involved, a stark contrast to the niece whose philosophy about both is tinted with curiosity and good will. In both the Porter and the Disney versions, the most appealing characteristic of little Pollyanna was her habit of making the world a brighter and better place, not by spectacular deeds or spectacular gifts, but by something she called "the glad game", a game that focused on finding something "glad" in any unpleasant or difficult situation. It was a game that also focused on the simple gesture of doing something kind and caring and pleasant for someone else as a means to get past and get away from dwelling on one's own problems. An interesting permutation of Pollyanna's "glad game" was her insistence on sharing its secret and its magic with even the most crotchety and miserable people, including the town's richest and most irascible hypochondriac. The Disney film includes a tragic accident; the little heroine is injured in a fall and loses the spark that made her special. She recovers with the help of the people she had played the glad game with, people determined to bring back the spark that had brightened up their own lives in one way or another. Today, the term "pollyanna" means something different to most people. It is a pleasant and cost effective way of sharing Christmas with colleagues at the office or other social groups. Names are written on slips of paper (sometimes with a gift wish list). The names are drawn at random, everyone gets a small gift, and no one is left out of the festivities. Everyone, in short, gets to participate in the glad game. I tried and failed to find some etymological connection between the Porter/Disney Pollyanna and the office pollyanna, but the concept is appealing and falls well within the range of possibilities. The "pollyanna" bestows bits of "glad" just as Pollyanna bestowed hers. At my workplace this year, we had a pollyanna, an event I usually shrug off with indifference or even mild irritation - just another gift to buy and I hope so- and- so didn't write down something difficult to find. I picked a name out of the box and read the wish list my friend Barbara had written up. Among her gift wishes was a request that a donation in her name be made to an animal shelter. It was an uncomfortable moment for me, a moment that made me want to say, "Hey, can I have my piece of paper back? I want to change my mind." Never mind what I had put on my wish list; it was neither crucial nor very interesting. What it wasn't was a gift that Pollyanna would have asked for ... a gift of giving. Barbara got the gift she chose. The few dollars donated in her name went for a good cause; the money will buy cat food or dog food or be used to pay part of the SPCA's operational expenses. I was happy to write the check and happy to be playing the glad game with her. So happy, in fact, that I upped the ante by writing a few more, in other people's names, or in my own, to several other charities. A donation in memory of a childhood friend who recently died of breast cancer to the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund, a donation in loving memory of my grandmother (a teacher) to the UNWLA scholarship fund for an indigent Ukrainian child in Brazil, donations in my own name to flood victims in Transcarpathia, to the American Red Cross. All were made in the spirit of the glad game rather than the spirit of duty, garnished with the firm resolve that if I participate in a pollyanna next year, my gift wish list will look very different.
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