Good service

It was kind of by accident, but AJ got an awesome experience in community service Saturday night. My friend Jess was helping organize a pasta feed fundraiser for a boy at the school where she works who has a worsening hearing disorder (the goal was to raise enough money to purchase a special audio amplification system that his insurance wouldn't cover) and so she put out a call for volunteers.

I agreed to help and, because of Jeff's schedule, brought the kids with me. My friend Crystal also came with her boys. Sydney was content to play in the nursery, but the boys wanted to help. Or maybe they just wanted to wear the plastic food service gloves. Either way, we put them to work.

AJ and Carver rotated between handing out salad and bread sticks. Both decided bread stick duty was easier than scooping up the dressing-coated salad.

"I liked serving people, but I didn't like that there were so many people," was AJ's summary of the experience. And there were a lot of people. Jess is estimating in the 400-450 range.

AJ's personality was on full display. As people moved through the line, AJ greeted each one with a "Good evening", "Have a nice day", "Thank you for coming" or something similar. (And thankfully, since he knew we were in a church basement in Superior, he held back on jokes about the Green Bay Packers.)

When the boys grew tired of their work, Crystal and I shifted into their positions and sent them to play.

But I was very proud of them. Sure, there was the novelty factor of serving food, but they hung in there for a long time. How often do kids have an opportunity to help someone their own age in such a way? Community service for elementary students usually comes in the form of canvasing the block asking neighbors to buy cookie dough, wrapping paper and other items they really don't need, all to raise money for their school where they may not realize the direct result of their work. In this case, they met the boy and saw that he looks and acts just like them.

And best of all, by the end of the night, they knew they directly helped this boy. The fundraising goal had been achieved. (Okay, if you ask AJ, the best part was at the very end of the night we stopped at Culver's for a late dinner and frozen custard. After serving all evening, AJ wasn't in the mood for pasta and bread sticks.) It was an experience I'm glad he's had, and we'll leave it at that.