School supplies

I spent Sunday and Monday helping out for a backpack drive at church. After all, school is about to start for a lot of children who can't afford school supplies, so I thought I'd lend a hand to my friend's mom, who organized the whole thing.

On Sunday we assembled all of the donations: backpacks with school supplies in them. But it wasn't that simple, of course. We had to take out the supplies and redistribute them evenly. After carrying dozens of heavy backpacks across the church/school grounds, it was much more exciting, even though it was a bit more time-consuming. Actually, I really don't remember much of what we did on Sunday because it was all overshadowed by Monday.

My sister and I got up bright and early to dedicate a full day to the cause on Monday, along with our friend Kim. Well, I didn't expect it to be more than most of a day, but it was actually closer to a full day, as I should have expected. We started out by going to some stores and buying supplies that we needed: particularly, large quantities of paper, markers, and notebooks for low, low prices.

Then, we were on our way to Starbucks to get some cool drinks when Kim's mom saw a homeless woman that she knew. She stopped the car by the side of the road (actually a pretty busy highway) and talked to the woman, who was standing on the sidewalk. She stepped forward from the sidewalk so that she could be at the passenger-side window. Kim's mom introduced her to us, and she seemed nice. Kim's mom just wanted to say hello, but apparently the homeless woman really wanted someone to talk to. Kim's mom said that we were going to be on our way, and that she would only drive off after she had seen her walk back up to the sidewalk (she didn't want her to get hit by a car, after all). She was telling the homeless woman to watch her step as she was walking slowly backward, but she tripped over the curb and fell onto the sidewalk.

We got out of the car, which was still parked in one of the lanes, and we now had an unfortunate reason for it to be there. Kim's mom made sure that the homeless woman was comfortable while Kim called an ambulance. Immediately, drivers passing by offered help. One offered his cell phone in case we needed it, another gave a mostly-unused bottle of water, and another was a paramedic who offered her services. Luckily, her help wasn't needed because Kim's mom is a nurse herself. A few minutes later, the ambulance was bumbling around a nearby parking lot, so I went and signaled them to go over to the scene of the accident.

They came onto the scene and prepared themselves to take the woman away. She was howling in pain. It was incredibly sad. She told Kim's mom to take her shopping cart full of possessions to her favorite pastor at another nearby church. The cart was big and smelly, but we managed to get it in there and take it to the church as it started to rain. As the door of the rectory opened, a woman looked at us three teenagers and asked if any of us knew anything about computers. My sister and Kim pointed back to me, so the woman led me to her old computer where her old word processor was having a problem. Parts of the background were black, and against the black text they were unreadable. Luckily it wasn't something I couldn't fix. I'd never even used this program and I could figure it out.

Then we were on our way to Starbucks as promised. I didn't get anything as I had been to Starbucks the past two days. So we got back to the church with our school supplies, and there we met some more energetic volunteers. It was all a matter of separating backpacks, separating school supplies, and then putting the right amount of school supplies in the right number of backpacks. It really was tedious work, and I grew tired. Plus, there were a few more trips to stores, including one where we filled 3 shopping carts with over $500 in merchandise.

Like I said, it was wearing me down. So we finally popped over to Wendy's to have a late lunch. I ate too much, as usual, and so I still felt tired as we worked for a few more hours putting things in backpacks and finally loading some of the backpacks in Kim's mom's van. It was the late afternoon when we finally finished. I'd spent 14 hours of the last two days sorting through pencils, erasers, pens, protractors, compasses, paper, folders, binders, calculators, rulers, crayons, markers, pencil cases, and of course, backpacks. The only thing I could possibly do after such long, eventful days was relax.

What would it look like if the dance scenes from Back to the Future and Back to the Future Part II were synchronized? Watch Back to the Future: The Enchantment Under the Sea Dance Revisited (Google Video) and find out. It's pretty cool.

Brooke Greenberg of Reiserstown, Maryland, looks and acts like a normal baby, but she's actually 13 years old. Here's some TV news coverage of her and her family. (I should add that although she seems to have puzzled scientists by defying the aging process, she's not particularly healthy.)

Two years ago: "Would you buy items from a WoS store? If so, what items would you like to see?"
Three years ago: "All day Wednesday, she's going to see how a lefty lives in a right-handed world."