A Sad Reality

It never takes much effort to remember why I do the work I do.  I’m confronted with it everyday.  I even sell it as often as I can to donors, and community supporters.  However, it is also easy for me to go weeks at a time without giving it any sort of deep thought.  Every once in awhile, though, something happens that confronts me head on with the reality of life that can be hard to swallow, but binds me ever more tightly to the mission that has somehow taken over my career.  Tonight was one of those nights.

A couple of our staff have been out for the last few days.  This is a good thing (when in moderation) because it forces me to step in and stay in tune with every aspect of the work we are doing.  Yesterday, at the end of the day, I prepared to take a few girls home after basketball practice.  We do not usually take kids home, but these girls live around the corner at a public housing complex where we have an after-school program. 

On this occasion, though, one of the girls informed me that she now lives somewhere else.  I questioned her further because I knew that she had caught a ride over to our gym for practice with our after-school staff person who works at CDS (the public housing apartments).  If she didn’t live at CDS any longer, I wondered, how is it that she caught the CDS van.  It turns out that for the last week or so, since she moved, she’s been riding the wrong bus home from school, the one that drops kids off at CDS, so that she can catch a ride from there to our gym for basketball practice.  Apparently her school is none the wiser.  This girl often sports a poor attitude and can sometimes be difficult to work with, leading our staff to often get frustrated with her.  It lends a whole different perspective when you realize that she goes through great pains to get herself to our Boys & Girls Club every day.

I dropped her off again this evening along with another girl named Asiarea.  Asiarea first came to us when her Godmother signed her up after being given custody of her.  Asiarea’s real mom was having drug issues.  In recent months, Asiarea has returned to living with her mom.  Often at the end of the day Asiarea has to call around to find someone to pick her up.  Recently, when her mom overdosed again, our staff started taking her home more frequently because there is often simply no one to come pick her up. 

Tonight, when I pulled up to the apartment where she stays with her mom, little brother and grandmother, no one was home. She tried calling her mom, her grandmother, her Godmother… no one answered.  We drove around a little bit checking a few places she thought her grandmother might be.  Nothing.  Eventually I asked her if she was hungry and took her to McDonalds to kill some time.  Keep in mind that by this time it is approaching 9:00pm.  I bought us some supper, and we sat and talked a little bit.  About the time we were going to leave, her uncle happened to walk in (a good guy, who volunteers in our programs a lot) and saw us sitting there.  Who knows, if he hadn’t walked in, I could still be sitting there with that little girl in front of here run-down apartment waiting for someone… anyone… to show up and let her in.

Those two girls could stay at the Boys & Girls Club all night, and no one would come looking for them.  No one would miss them.

It’s not like I didn’t know this already.  I’ve known things were like this for those two for a long time.  But tonight it hit me hard.  Tonight was one of those nights.

People never cease to amaze me.

“Someone,” did “something,” unbelievable at work while I was away for the weekend.  I would write about it, but you know what they say when it comes to blogging about work.  It always comes back to bite you.

That’s the problem with working so much.  Now I don’t have anything to write about.

Rotary was interesting yesterday.   I heard this story about this family that went to the symphony.  They wanted to sit up in the balcony but they said that their son couldn’t walk down stairs.  He could make it up the stairs just fine.  There was nothing wrong with him in a physical or mentally handicapped way, he just couldn’t walk down a flight of stairs… psychologically I guess.

I need to come up with something like that for myself.  Hmm.  Send me your ideas.

Two kids walked into my office today and looked at a piece of art work I have hanging up.  They refused to believe that I drew it.  Stupid kids.

One of our rout drivers is out this week and I have been driving his bus rout.  This is always an interesting experience.  I enjoy doing it when I have to, but I’m always grateful that I don’t have to do it everyday.  Large vehicles are hard enough just to navigate the streets with, but to control 30 kids at the same time is a daunting challenge.  We have fun, however, and if they ever start misbehaving too bad, they know I’ll turn on the country music radio station, which to them is like sending them directly to hell.

I rather balding man told me last night that God made two kinds of heads.  The ones to see, and the ones that have to be covered up with hair.  So take that!!!... all you full heads of hair.

10 Things To Remember When You Are The "Best Man"

1) When Groomsmen are arriving late at night for the bachelor party, the reason you should pick up supplies before they arrive is not because you want to start the party as soon as possible but rather because most stores close at a certain hour.  If you wait until after 10:00pm to purchase said supplies, the only store still open is Wal-Mart, and they do not sell concrete.

2) When coordinating the arrival of the groom and groomsmen, keep in mind that bad weather can derail flight plans.  Flights that are supposed to arrive at 8:30pm and midnight might instead arrive at 12:30am and 2:30am respectively.

3) If delayed flights have made you aware that there is bad weather in the area, you should not leave your sunroof open when you go into a store just in case it arrives suddenly though not wholly unexpected.

4) When raining, a lot of water can enter into your car through an open sunroof even if it is not open very much.  When this happens, the seats in your car tend to get very wet and consequently your clothes as well if you plan to sit down while driving.

5) Nearly all fast-food restaurants that are open 24 hours don’t actually keep their entire store open all night, only the drive-through window.  This is the case even if all the doors are open, and you make it all the way inside and to the counter and there are employees standing right in front of you at the cash register.  You must still walk back out to your car and place your order at the drive-through window.

6) In the minutes leading up to a wedding ceremony, a bride will not find things amusing that she would normally find hilarious.  For this reason, make sure the bride’s family does not notify her of any traditional but sketchy pre-ceremony activity in which the groom and his groomsmen might be engaging.  If she finds out, she might have an emotional break down.

7) Even if the wedding coordinator is extremely bossy and seems to have everything under control, and even if she speaks to you like you are a child and tells you to do exactly what she says… still, she might not take care of everything.

8) Grooms who are very relaxed and chill right before their wedding are not necessarily so because they have thought of and taken care of everything.

9) For the reasons insinuated in the two reminders mentioned above, do not forget to make sure the groom has the ring!

10) If you fail to remember the preceding four instructions, do not make eye contact with the bride during the ceremony.

What Up...

I’m now 0-4 in the last two years when watching the Spurs play Phoenix at Buffalo wild wings.  I’ve got to stop doing that.  The characters were interesting this time, however, making the evening rather interesting.  They were also playing the Cubs – Pirates game (why can’t every Astros game be nationally televised?  Stupid wgn).  There was a rather rabid Cubs fan who apparently hadn’t got the memo about “101” years of futility.  It was a good game, though, lasting 15 innings so we had some good laughs as he moaned and groaned (and finally cheered when they won) and his friends and I watched on.

Then the Spurs lost and this morning I can’t find my credit card that I used, so it was a pretty rank night.  I didn’t get much sleep, lying in bed for a couple hours, my mind bouncing from one thing to another.  I don’t mind working 60+ hours a week, but I wish I could turn things off when I go home.  I wish I had some sort of automatic secretary that digitally recorded everything I thought about business wise.  The frustrating thing about thinking about work as I fall asleep is that I know in the morning I won’t be able to remember any of the solutions I thought up, or the items of concern that I mentally made a list of to fix or address.

I spent some time with the kids yesterday which is nearly always fun.  Life is much more simpler when you're helping a third grader with their homework.  I stopped by our housing authority site for the last hour or so, always an interesting experience.  Not many kids but these are the projects, so you stay on your toes.  The kids are far out, though, and I love hanging with them in small doses.  One thing a like about my job is that I’m sort of like a grandparent.  I can hang out with the kids as much as I want, spoil them, have fun with them, rile them up and then when I get tired or they get wearisome, I can just leave.  Heh, heh.  (Don’t you know our staff love that).