I helped out with the PTO spring fair today. It’s just a little fair, some games that are near impossible to lose, and lots of those big blow-up bouncy things, including the Super Slide. I actually chose to work the Super Slide today, figured I’d sit in my little chair, check for wristbands and tickets, make sure only one kid went up at a time, piece o’ cake. There was even another mom there, good, I’ll have someone to chat with.
Heh.
Turns out they needed someone to climb up the damn thing and make sure the kids used the mats properly, didn’t try to dive down head-first, etc. And I was the one asked to do this. I will say the volunteer coordinator really looked like she hated to ask me! But I looked up there, it was shaded, not all that high up, how bad could it be? So I grabbed my water bottle and scrambled to the top. Ok, crawled slowly to the top.
At first it wasn’t so bad. The kids brough the mats up, I set them up and gave them each a little shove. They were all having fun, and I love doing games like this with kids. I was joking with the “regulars” who kept coming back for more, helping the tiny ones who were either too excited or too scared. I thrive on this stuff.
But then they started coming fast and furious. The mom acting as gatekeeper was sending them up one after another after another, it was all I could do to grab a sip of water now and then. Add to that the serious discomfort factor. I had to be on my knees the entire time because it was much too wobbly to stand, and when sitting I couldn’t reach to get the mats set up. The surface up there was rough, dirtier by the minute, and there were velcro strips right where the tops of my feet had to go while I was kneeling. Two hours of this. Plus, while it was shaded, it was pretty well enclosed by the big walls of air-filled plastic, so it got hot up there! I was sweating through my clothes, lovely.
Finally my replacement arrived (a 14 year old, much better suited for the job!) and I was able to head back down. Both legs were practically asleep, and I have skin missing from where the velcro was scraping against the tops of my toes.
Ah, but it was fun. Really. Painful, but fun. (There’s a very blurry picture of my view from the top of the slide on the moblog.)