Volunteering

I have been volunteering for a month now and wonder if I made a mistake. Then again, it could be just because I'm new at it. I need to learn to be less helpful since new people get in the way and do things wrong. I did get an adventure trying to shut the windows as requested. You have to pull in metal stoppers in the window frame and then push it down. Humidity making the wood swell and trying to keep both stoppers pulled in at the same time made it a bit difficult. I am getting accomplished in the ball and cup game that the people I work with commented today I need to learn a craft. I'm sure they can tell I'm getting bored just sitting there while the assistant supervisor and intern work with the day camp kids. I challenged myself by flipping the ball into the tiny cup game with my left hand when the right hand got tired. My left hand is less agile, but I got the ball in the cup.

It probably would help if I had interesting stories to talk about. I can't compete with the others stories of 3-year-olds using words like balls and pussy, or a neighbor man stealing dresses and wearing them on his front porch with combat boots, or a promiscuous preacher's wife, or throwing lightening bugs into a bug zapper. Today, I told them about my girls day out with my niece, my Mom's comments at plantation houses down South, the high speed chase last week, and the discovery of Queens Mary and Eilizabeth (of England) were buried in the same crypt but there is only a statue of Elizabeth on top. My stories are boring, but I try to interject into the conversation. One girl who went to college at the William and Mary talked to people around Colonial Willlaimsburg. I never got around to my visit to Williamsburg last summer, it was just one day. She commented how people working there are unsure how to address the slavery part of colonial history.

If you wondering what my Mom's comments at plantation houses down South were I'll give a few. At one house, Mom asked if slaves were paid. At a gift shop, she asked why there are so many Confederate toy soldiers on display. When she looked up family history at a courthouse, she got confused at the property records listing slaves. I had to explain that slaves were viewed as property and not people. And in the records, she saw unfamiliar terms like using boy to describe a 35-year-old man. Another question was how did the North states grow crops and build things without slave labor. I had to explain the small family farm concept and the fact that Northern industry owners paid their immigrant workers next to nothing. I can tell she went to school during the 1950's Cold War where one only heard how Americans win every war they fight and things like African slavery and Indian reservations were swept under the rug as if they never happened.

When we visited Custer's Last Stand years ago, she had similar comments about Native Amercians. She was shocked to learn that white people were actually mean to the Native Americans and shocked that not all Native Americans are the same. One camp ground we stayed at near Glacier National Park was owned by a Native American and Mom kept insulting the man with her ignorance and got us placed in a bad spot on the camp ground far away from the bathrooms. She kept calling him an Indian when he said he is a Native American, asked if he rode horses when he hunted, and asked if his family lived in a normal house with electricity or a Indian house we saw at a museum. I was so embarrassed that I looked at postcards while she chatted with the man. I can't remember if I bought any postcards, my memory is not that good. Post later. Bye!