Desperate Love
Volunteering makes one feel great!
I volunteered today and it made me feel great!
I volunteered at the Beloit Winterfest, which was described by one of my volunteer colleagues as "ghetto" and "dangerous," describing it so badly that it led him to believe that he should want to write a letter to a U.S. Representative because of it. Thus, leading me to believe that I should have no place volunteering at the afore-mentioned Winterfest in the future for fear of my own life.
Arriving on the scene proved that things were not at all as bad as they had seemed. I was signed up to work in the "crafts" department from 4pm - 6pm, with my good friends and fellow fraternal brothers Arune and Elon. I ended up working at the "rock climbing wall" from 4pm - 7pm by myself, keeping myself company with the gnarly music that was ever playing loudly all around me and by the energetic, curious youth that plagued my game with unrelenting interest.
In order to entertain these kids the way they wanted to be entertained, I was to strap on them a snug-fitting harness (which screams child-molestation suit) attached to a rope which went through a loop at the top and was held earnestly by me on the other end. I, the innocent bystander, the volunteer, was responsible for the lives, the very well-being of these strangers, these youth. While they strap themselves in eagerly awaiting my signal to scale this giant rubber pyramid full of air, I am at their feet contemplating all the different things that could go wrong while their lives are in my hands.
Some of these children are natural mountaineers, who quickly identify the perils and problems of rock-climbing. Some of these children are naturally petrified of anything that would bring them over the height of ten feet (this was me in my younger days). Some of these children are brats that have no compassion for other people's feelings and have poor manners and social skills. Some of these children are delightful people who have a wealth of intrigue and intelligence that will make them amazing grown-ups one day. Some of these children are ditzy teenage and pre-teen girls using this game as a desperate plight to get close to a cute older boy (yours truly). And all of these children have this innocence that allows them to depend solely on you for everything, even if it is only for a minute, and let you help them down without injuring or embarrassing themselves. I learned something important today, and that is that when you are encountering children in a manner that they are not directly connected to you, in order to get the full effect of that dependable, helpful, not-gonna-let-you-fall deity, you have to love each child like he or she is your own. This means being cordial, friendly, knowledgeable, and genuinely caring at all times, even if your relationship with that child last upwards of five seconds. Because no matter what that child looks like, be he/she black, white, bald, physically disabled, you can bet that someone in this world loves that child like you never could, and that no matter what you think of him/her, that child deserves that kind of love, so it might as well be from you. And even if that child doesn't get the kind of love he/she deserves at home, you are never going to know it and you're probably not going to be able to do anything about it, and thus you never know how much a little love from you could do for a kid like that. You could probably express the reasoning behind this in a hundred mathematical theorems involving sociology and child development and psychology, but I'd like to put it in a simple form for us all to understand: a little love goes a long way.
I volunteered today and it made me feel great!
I volunteered at the Beloit Winterfest, which was described by one of my volunteer colleagues as "ghetto" and "dangerous," describing it so badly that it led him to believe that he should want to write a letter to a U.S. Representative because of it. Thus, leading me to believe that I should have no place volunteering at the afore-mentioned Winterfest in the future for fear of my own life.
Arriving on the scene proved that things were not at all as bad as they had seemed. I was signed up to work in the "crafts" department from 4pm - 6pm, with my good friends and fellow fraternal brothers Arune and Elon. I ended up working at the "rock climbing wall" from 4pm - 7pm by myself, keeping myself company with the gnarly music that was ever playing loudly all around me and by the energetic, curious youth that plagued my game with unrelenting interest.
In order to entertain these kids the way they wanted to be entertained, I was to strap on them a snug-fitting harness (which screams child-molestation suit) attached to a rope which went through a loop at the top and was held earnestly by me on the other end. I, the innocent bystander, the volunteer, was responsible for the lives, the very well-being of these strangers, these youth. While they strap themselves in eagerly awaiting my signal to scale this giant rubber pyramid full of air, I am at their feet contemplating all the different things that could go wrong while their lives are in my hands.
Some of these children are natural mountaineers, who quickly identify the perils and problems of rock-climbing. Some of these children are naturally petrified of anything that would bring them over the height of ten feet (this was me in my younger days). Some of these children are brats that have no compassion for other people's feelings and have poor manners and social skills. Some of these children are delightful people who have a wealth of intrigue and intelligence that will make them amazing grown-ups one day. Some of these children are ditzy teenage and pre-teen girls using this game as a desperate plight to get close to a cute older boy (yours truly). And all of these children have this innocence that allows them to depend solely on you for everything, even if it is only for a minute, and let you help them down without injuring or embarrassing themselves. I learned something important today, and that is that when you are encountering children in a manner that they are not directly connected to you, in order to get the full effect of that dependable, helpful, not-gonna-let-you-fall deity, you have to love each child like he or she is your own. This means being cordial, friendly, knowledgeable, and genuinely caring at all times, even if your relationship with that child last upwards of five seconds. Because no matter what that child looks like, be he/she black, white, bald, physically disabled, you can bet that someone in this world loves that child like you never could, and that no matter what you think of him/her, that child deserves that kind of love, so it might as well be from you. And even if that child doesn't get the kind of love he/she deserves at home, you are never going to know it and you're probably not going to be able to do anything about it, and thus you never know how much a little love from you could do for a kid like that. You could probably express the reasoning behind this in a hundred mathematical theorems involving sociology and child development and psychology, but I'd like to put it in a simple form for us all to understand: a little love goes a long way.
posted by Leland J. Fischer at 3:17 AM
<< Home