Just as my life was settling down and starting to feel too routine, my sister invited me to volunteer with her and my nephew for an outdoor activity. I’d been to this outdoor family-oriented area previously when I’d searched for a leave a book/take a book kiosk.
Apparently, this organization had hosted the Ninja obstacle course activities for several years running. There were three levels, that roughly corresponded to age groups: treehouse for the the youngest participants, intermediate for older children and elite for adults–although some older children and teenagers attempted the elite course and some adults ran the intermediate course.
We rolled up just in time to meet the morning volunteers, have a boxed lunch with them, then listen to a brief orientation. Several women knew my sister from previous volunteer events.
Although my volunteer assignment was at the participant registration desk, I hardly did a thing because three other women, who’d worked the event several times in the past, ran the table. Before I could greet families and individuals who approached the table, one of those women would yell out their names as they approached and helped them. As they processed people who registered with far more forms than my Virgo sensibilities thought was necessary, I caught on to the rhythm of how things should be done.
(For the record, two forms could have been combined on the same piece of paper with people only filling out the liability part if they weren’t going to run an obstacle course and another section if they were, then signing an attendance sheet to keep a running total of who was there that particular day since the event was held over multiple days.)
I managed to help perhaps two groups to register, but with one of the other women double checking my work, which I didn’t mind since they weren’t treating me as if I was incompetent.
During a lull, I walked around the grounds to take in the activities since registration was a ways away from the action. The treehouse course wasn’t actually being run by volunteers, so parents had to supervise their own children rather than watch them as an audience member. Only the intermediate and elite courses were being ran and timed as recorded events.
In the brief time I watched the elite course, two guys dropped at the same time, with one guy landing practically on top of the other, injuring him. The medic on duty was an impressive linebacker-built Black man. I immediately thought that if I had an emergency, that was the person I’d want to come to my aid.
The other people in line for the elite course didn’t seem the least bit phased by that injury and once the injured guy was helped and escorted out of the pool of water to audience applause, two more guys started the course. The faster of the two was working his way across the peg ladder when one of his pegs broke in half. He reported that he heard it cracking just before he fell into the pool. I didn’t blame him for feeling robbed.
Later in the day, the real work began. We tackled our parents’ front closet, which doubled as a pantry. Although the closet wasn’t as big as the garage we’d cleaned and organized, it was still full of stuff since we’d first moved into the house in ’79.
We moved out a portable rack full of coats and jackets, then cleared the floor and the bottom three shelves of canned/boxed/jarred food. After vacuuming mystery grain (that looked like corn meal, but Mom disagrees), wiping down and lining the shelves, my sister arranged the preserved food in the closet, which my nephew and I had grouped for convenience.
This process, which took much longer than we’d anticipated. Here are some things we discovered: 1) far too many boxes of Jello, especially lemon and orange, which will probably become Jello shots; 2) far too many boxes of vanilla instant pudding; 3) lots of stuff that should have been in the garage now that there was room; 4) a genealogy report my maternal grandfather had assembled.
That last nugget is the stuff of great discoveries are made of. The report was chock full of family history, most of which I didn’t know. Nonetheless, given the deteriorating condition of its flimsy construction paper cover, I knew I had to preserve it in sheet protectors. Once I removed the three brass brackets and placed the pages into protectors, I noticed the pages had no numbers.
I bought white blank labels, cut them into small squares and placed them on the lower hand side of the protected sheets. Then, using a scanning app on my phone, I took a picture of each page. Finally, I emailed the digital copy to my other sister and a cousin who has done deep research into our family history.
As I read the report, I noted that there were inconsistencies in the names. Within my mother’s part of the family tree, her older sister, Marguerite, who’d tragically died in a fire as a child, had been omitted.
- Yes, the Virgo in me wants to update the report to clarify the confusing parts, correct the errors and expand upon the entries where the entirety of a person’s description is merely the son/daughter or spouse of someone. Plus, the index in the back should also be referenced with page numbers…now that they exist!
