May 1, 2008
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1 All right, all right! Okay! There were NO significant sports' things going on last night.
2 M'bad.
3 Ah whatuevuh.
4 So here's a fun thing. I am too sunburned, already.
5 I know what you're thinking: "The WHITE boy is complaining about a tan? PUH-LEEEEEZE!"
6 No, but SERIOUSLY. Hear me out.
7 I got a monkey tan. That means I look like one of those monkey butts you see scraping the rocks at Monkey Island at the now controversial San Francisco Zoo.
8 YEEESH!
9 Why you gotta ruin it fo, mang?
10 Okay, this is for the hideously out of it: Monkey Island is a reference to this island they have in the middle of the San Francisco Zoo, an island that features...
11 Monkeys with red butts!
12 Okay, there.
13 I've said it. They also feature tiger habitats that clearly don't keep tigers away from taunters. Okay, so you've now been warned.
14 ANYWAYZZZZZZZZZ...
15 We had Senior Panoramic today.
16 Close to 600 Seniors, each of whom felt they needed to be treated like an individual. They came to the football field at 9 a.m. and sat with their friends, and it was the first time the Seniors were able to come together in a relaxed, much-deserved fashion. We've all been through this. But...
17 Oy.
18 I had to go out to the football field for what seemed like a billion, ka-JILLION years and make sure that everybody was having fun taking a group picture and then chillin' until this amazing barbecue was cooked. Our principal wanted to give the Seniors the absolute royal treatment.19 The only thing was, the pictures were done by 9:30, and the barbecue was to begin at 11:30 a.m.
20 The MATH tells me this: That dawg don't hunt.
21 I provided the background music.
22 The chicken sizzled on the barbecue. Smoke poured into the morning sky.
23 Close to 600 Seniors smelled the chicken. They played games, listened to the music, chilled with friends they've hung out with since childhood.
24 I stood in the sun, which baked mercilessly in the fierce sky, helping out wherever I could with the sound system, and with song requests and all. But I was also in the sun the entire morning.
25 They were given numbered tickets when the arrived in the morning, and around 45 minutes before they were to eat had to be herded into the stands and wait for their number to be called so they could finally get their food.
26 And they weren't allowed out of the bleachers.
27 I had the wonderful job of calling out the numbers, which was being controlled from a command base by walkie-talkie.
28 For around one solid hour I had every person out there screaming at me to hurry it along. Students, staff, members of the neighborhood, air-traffic controllers at Reid-Hillview, and entire members of Congress.
29 Each one-hundred numbers had a space of what seemed like twenty minutes between them so that by the time the final group got to go, they almost knocked over the poor guys who were barbecuing.
30 In the end I was the most hated person on the planet, and having turned red made me look like a madman. I still smiled and stayed good-natured, but make no mistake: they will always HATE the messenger.
31 So I went and got my chicken, which had sauce all over it, and sat down by myself.
32 They didn't even have napkins, so I had to use bottled water to clean my fingers.
33 I shook and didn't feel much like eating at that point, so I just chewed a little and threw the rest away.
34 And I finally went inside and finished up my day, which ended well but left me glowingly red for the rest of the day.
35 Anyway, when I returned to my office I found a small card on my desk.
36 It was a thank you card from our Sierra Club, a club affectionately named Forever Green. They wanted to thank me for all the help I gave, and they also told me that the Earth thanked me.
37 It was signed by a whole bunch of them, and had little hearts and smiles and all.
38 It brought it all back home, and was a wonderful end to a rather trying day.
39 So I got home, felt so much better, and then looked in the mirror.
40 The sunburn didn't seem so bad anymore.
41 Sometimes that's all it takes, and your entire weekend is already nice.
42 So you might just tell someone thanks today.
43 Easy to do, and it can really turn things around.
44 Have a great weekend.
45 Peace.
~H~
http://www.xanga.com/bharrington
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