Dad on Duty #92

Today is our cookout day.  In reality, we do this because we lose the cafeteria space to a fundraiser (we’ll talk about that in a bit).

It’s a huge operation to setup.  The cafeteria folks actually, really, setup an outside grill for the burgers and hot dogs

And we have to move the vast majority of the cafeteria tables, along with the condiments station and the ice cream cooler, outside.  Not easy.

The cookout is fun for the kids though; they get to do a picnic lunch outside with their parents.

Unless, of course, it rains…..

Guess what……

So after we get Kinder and First settled in out into the courtyard….about 200 kids, with their parents or other visitors….it starts raining, and we now gotta quickly move them all back inside, and redirect the other 450 kids, and 100 or so visitors, in a new direction.

It goes better than expected. Which means about as well as an appendectomy by a blind, one-armed, drunk, monkey.

The kids “get to” eat in the hallway outside their classrooms.  For all but the biggest kids, it’s still fun for them.  Any change in the routine is an adventure.

For the 5th graders, not so much.  They are not so easily impressed, and don’t find sitting on the floor of the hallway to be an improvement over the cafeteria.

******

We get called to the little kid playground after lunch.  “Can we please get some Dads out here?”  There’s a spider.  Headed down the wall.  And the first grade teachers are darn sure not dealing with it.

The kids are going crazy.  And strangely, the more they shout and scream, the more the spider moves toward them.  When they quiet down for a second, he stops and waits.

He likes noise?

It takes this dude about 15 minutes to make the long walk down the 50 foot wall.  It’s fascinating to the kids….and to us.

Think about his trek.  He came from the roof.  Which means he climbed up another wall….all 50 feet….then across 200+ feet of roof, and then down this wall.  That’s like, literally, 3 marathons for you or I.  Pretty impressive.  All in search of crickets.  And love.

Finally, he gets close enough that we can catch him.  He’s not too happy about it, and talks some crap.  But we finally get him in a box and bring him to Janae….who for some reason, as the librarian, ends up being in charge of critters…..

He’s in high demand; a bunch of teachers ask for him.  One of the first grade teachers wins the lottery, and he heads to her class.

*********

Janae is organizing a “loose change” fundraiser in the library.  If the kids can beat the goal of $1100, the Boss has agreed to ride a horse around the school.

At the appointed measurement time, Janae announces the total……a little over $1100.

The crowd goes wild!

Sure enough, as I’m doing a routine walk around on the bus lane side of the school, there appears….a horse.  And a rider.

I radio to the Boss; “um….your ride is here….”.  “Yay”, she responds.  Appropriately unenthusiastically.

But it’s still raining, not enough to be a problem right now, but I think it will get worse if we wait.

Most of the kids are still at lunch, or transitioning to/from lunch.  Remember, we’ve now got them scattered all over the building since the cafeteria is unavailable.  So, adding another moving part, is not easy.

I tell the Boss “If you’re going to do this, I think it’s gotta be now”.

So, Deb makes the overhead announcement, but several teachers call in to point out their kids are out of position, can’t make it.  We end up with only a couple of grades outside to witness the equestrianism.

The Boss is not really dressed for this undertaking.  I walk with her over toward the horse, and she reaches back, grabs my shoulder and says “get me up there”.  Well, the only way I’m gonna be able to do that is to hike you up there by your butt.  So I just grab her belt and heave….and she lands, with surprising grace and a little surprised, onto the horse.

They take a few laps, to the glee and applause of the children watching.

Then the horse takes a disliking to something…..and jumps.  The Boss comes this close to flying off the horse onto the the driveway.  She lets out a sharp cry and grabs the driver with all her might, and avoids what, no doubt, would have been a catastrophic fall.

So, that was fun.  Totally worth it.

*********

We’re unloading and setting up for the pickup of fundraiser.  It’s a significant operation, to say the least.

The trucks bringing the merchandise won’t fit through the driveway the normal way because so many cars are in the parking lot that they are spilling over against the curb.  So we have to run them in backwards, like salmon swimming upstream.

It takes 3 Dads to bring in each truck.  Once parked, these guys are really good; it takes the drivers about 10 minutes to completely empty a truck full of about 5,000 pounds of wrapping paper, cookie dough and other sundries

We leave a couple of Dads in the cafeteria to help with the fund raiser pickup, partially to move boxes but also because the operation requires us to leave multiple doors unlocked, and brings a lot of traffic into the building, people who are unchecked and relatively uncontrolled.

Funny how now, I think that way.  Twenty years ago, I would have just seen the cafeteria full of stuff and people as a logistics operation.

Now, first and foremost…and to the deficit of everything else….I see it as a security situation.

But it’s, literally, the last one of these for me.  No more cookie dough pickup days at McCoy.  No more “cookout” adventures.  That was it.

I look around, and soak it up.  It’s a stupid thing to relish, I guess.

Except that every last thing, is mattering more and more.