Picking up from yesterday –
Let’s get back to the events of the day. I will say that this is one of the most caring groups of people I’ve worked with. Three – that’s right, three – different people brought me water during the day because they knew I couldn’t leave my post, and they saw me doing oh so much talking with the children.
I didn’t tell anyone I was thirsty – I didn’t even realize I was forgetting to hydrate! But three separate people walked by at different points, saw that I might have a need for water, and just grabbed it for me. I thought that was so sweet, and it was an act (x3) that totally touched me.
Also, one of the main volunteers brought me a megaphone so I didn’t have to keep basically screaming to try to be heard at this huge outdoor event. (I mean, I can project and all… But you gotta imagine a lot of stuff happening, and a lot of noise happening as well.)
There were some obstacles during the day – other than just the kids who often ignored human chains and instructions. (I mean, good for them for their fearlessness, and their refusal to conform or follow rules or whatever… but also, eesh. I’m glad they have free-spirts that haven’t been squashed… However there has to be some order to things, right?)
Anyway, another smaller obstacle was hearing each other on the walkies. I tried to keep mine close enough and loud enough that I could hear important information… But as I mentioned, it was really loud there – kids, parents, the emcee, music…
We didn’t have earpieces (and honestly, I’m not quite sure how much they would’ve helped anyway, since we probably would’ve had to blow out our eardrums to hear. (And that volume would distort voices anyway.)) So, communication was hard to have.
Granted, once the day got going, we didn’t generally need to communicate all that much – except when they ran out of medals(!). I know. Running out of medals sounds super sad and disappointing (and probably was for the kids…). Thank goodness I wasn’t working the finish line after that happened. That was probably not fun to be the bearer of that news…
(I heard the kids would still definitely get medals mailed to their schools.)
Thankfully, I heard the call to stop heats from going. (The kids in the heat we stopped we sooooo not happy. I think they would’ve overthrown us and just stormed the track if we’d needed to wait another minute or two….
So, I heard the call to stop them. But I was so overly-petrified that I wasn’t going to hear the call to let them start up again! After a few minutes, I’m nervous asking into the walkie if people know that kids are no longer running, and if we know when to start. I don’t usually like to waste walkie air space on info people already know. But that’s the thing. I didn’t know if anyone knew it!
And this is where I’ll pick up tomorrow.