Volunteered

Work­ing the week­end sucks, but at least there was some­thing funny to take out of it.

Again I’m also grate­ful to the vol­un­teers who turned up on Sat­ur­day to help at my company’s Spe­cial Olympics Gym­nas­tics class at Bis­han Sports Hall. You guys are wonderful.

Then there were the two other peo­ple who were acci­den­tally vol­un­teered by my col­leagues and I. Thank you also. Heh.

Last week, my col­league took a call from a Kevin (or Kelvin) from the Down Syn­drome Asso­ci­a­tion, who said he wanted to meet us to dis­cuss fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tion on pro­grammes for spe­cial needs kids. Then he took a call from a Kelvin (or Kevin) from some com­pany who wanted to see if we or the par­ents of chil­dren attend­ing our pro­grammes would be inter­ested in buy­ing mini-trampolines from his company.

My col­league said ok to meet­ing Kevin (or Kelvin) from the DSA, hop­ing to show him how our spe­cial needs class worked. My col­league also for­got he said ok to Kelvin (or Kevin) from the mini-trampoline com­pany, to meet us at 6pm Sat­ur­day as well.

Mean­while, I was run­ning around coor­di­nat­ing the vol­un­teers who were turn­ing up sev­eral at a time. Kelvin (or Kevin) turns up with a work­mate, and I imme­di­ately assumed he was a vol­un­teer, as did my col­league. We instructed Kelvin and his work­mate to take their shoes off, put their bags one side (‘don’t worry, no one will take your bags — put them there’), and join the rest of the vol­un­teers being assigned to the var­i­ous gym­nas­tic appa­ra­tus sta­tions on the floor.

It didn’t occur to me or my col­leagues that Kelvin (or Kevin) wasn’t a vol­un­teer. Even when he brought his sam­ple equip­ment (which he had hoped to sell) down to the floor. We even put his mini-trampolines to use for the spe­cial needs kids. 40+ of them, tram­pling on the tram­po­lines good good.

It was only after the class was over that my col­league told me about the bun­gle, and that he was too busy to take Kelvin (or Kevin) out of the class cir­cuit, and that besides, Kelvin (or Kevin) looked like he was enjoy­ing himself.

So, thank you, Kelvin (or Kevin), of the com­pany that sells mini-trampolines. You rock!

My com­pany oper­ates with ‘Swist Pre­ci­sion’. Prease forgive.

iTunes is play­ing an ille­gal copy of North Dakota from the album “Live In Texas” by Lyle Lovett of which I have the orig­i­nal CD.

Surf stop: MEDIA SLOG