Volunteers, Elephants, and Ultimate Life Questions…



Today was a day of letter answering, questions that everyone should ponder but probably haven’t as of yet, and most importantly: lameness.

The day started phenomenally. I arrived early, after guiltily scarfing down a Rockstar Energy Drink (to me it was justified because it was lemonade flavored and only a buck. So there), and was faced with the task of answering emails sent to us by our lovely soon-to-be volunteers. While typing away, I made note of something interesting- almost all of our emails from people are more like letters – letters explaining how excited they are to hear about a program like us, how passionate they are to keep up some sort of creative spark in the minds of children, how they have all these great experiences that make them apt contributors. Sure, there were a couple emails that just asked for information, and those are great too, but the amount of people who have this excitement about helping these kids kind of thrilled me. It was time well spent, reading through those letters, and it goes to show: our volunteers rock in so many diverse and awesome ways.  So woo-hoo, volunteers!! And woo-hoo to all of you out there who, even if you aren’t an active participant in our program, believe that it only takes a little bit of one-on-one interaction to change things for a kid.

After the emails were finished and the warm fuzzies cooled down a bit, I took a brief 15 minutes to configure this here blog. I got it to look sort of organized, but it is now brown. This is not something I am a fan of. I tried to change the text, and it only proved to me, or rather reiterated this point, that I am horrifically unsavvy with computers. But I digress. Soon enough, it was time for our kids to start arriving. Slow at first, I sat at a table with a few of our volunteers and chatted. Little did I know where our chatting would lead….

First, one particular volunteer happened to have a pet salamander named Thor. A fierce name for a fierce creature.  This is pretty irrelevant to the rest of this ‘graph but I just wanted to throw it out there because I really do think a salamander named Thor is just great. As we heard about Thor’s adventures, I skimmed through a book we  happened to have on one of our bookshelves: Cambridge Fact Finder. Everything from Transportation to Gestation periods- which of course is what I flipped through first (accidentally… don’t worry. I don’t have a out-of-control interest in the birthing of other animals). Anyway, it turns out that a camel has that little bun in the oven for a over a year!- 402 days, if I may be so precise! Imagine- that hump of water up on top and then a hump down below, carrying a baby? We sympathized. Then. In the next column, there it was. Elephants are pregnant for two YEARS! What?? Poor little elephants! As we discussed the agony of the elephant birthing procedure, Ruby interrupted with a very important question: do chickens lay eggs every day? Is egg laying painful? And also, where do snakes give birth? (don’t ask me how we got chickens and snakes in the same phrase). And what about dolphins? How do they give birth? As I type this I am aware that the answer is a click away on google… but I just want to play stupid for a second- how do these things WORK?? Those poor elephants…

Then the kids came! A small crowd, with many of the regular faces. Ah the melancholy of remembering the last 2 weeks of school- the dreading of doing any sort of work whatsoever, the pain of going to class, etc, etc. But our kids are good and after they did their work, read, and wrote in our slam books (one of which is soon to be published- yay!) they started playing games. Well, our interns like games too, and as the crowd dwindled, we figured it was time to combine game-playing efforts. So we got together, middle schoolers and 20somethings, and started playing a drawing version of telephone (I attempted to explain it through typing but it just doesn’t work. Nina, another great intern, is the queen of the game and if you really want to know, if it is just killing you, then I am sure she could explain better). And then it started. The Lame word. Everything was all of a sudden lame, says the kids playing at our table. Ah, teenage rebellion, ho-ho-ho…. (as if I wasn’t that age less than a decade ago)…. They milked the word all they could- and it turned out pretty funny.  Has it dawned on anyone else that middle schoolers, and kids in general, laugh approximately 10,000,000 times more than adults?  Whats up with that? It makes me sigh, as I sit here drinking yet another lemonade. People attribute it to immaturity- but I am not sure that’s really what it is. I just think they have a ton of fun- and the great thing is, is that as their playing, their work gets done too. Whether its regular old homework or writing silly but incredibly expressive passages in our journals, their attitude is one I wish more adults would simulate. Think how fun it would be if adults just burst out laughing doing whatever they do. If they hear a joke. If they see a funny picture. If they DRAW a funny picture. Or what if THEY all called eachother lame?

That, my friends, would be a jovial world.

So, here you are, fine readers, from good volunteers, to mysterious snakes, from pregnant elephants to the mystery of adulthood, a day in the life of an intern’s crazy brain. It was a good one!

Back to the lemonade.

Kat.

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