Abbie's Real Life Blog

I volunteered at the food bank again last night, and I see now that there seem to be two kinds of people who also volunteer at the food bank: sullen college students and chipper church people.

I am older than the college students, and they know that, and they don’t tend to want to interact with me as far as I can tell, so I’m cheerful but silent around them.  I’m not quite ready to be the old person peppering the younger one with questions.

I am younger than most of the church people, which switches up the dynamic.  They are never sure how old I am, and always ask if I am in college.  Weird, isn’t it?  The college kids know immediately that I am older than they are, but those who are middle-aged are not sure where to place me.  The church people are far more interested in talking to me and ask a lot of questions and are generally very friendly but slightly bossy about how we do the project that we are supposed to be doing.  (Which, so far, is taking bulk amounts of one kind of food and breaking it into 20-30 smaller bags and packing those up again so that redistribution is easier.)

Last night, I got to work with some kids.  I don’t know how long it’s been since I interacted with a 10-year-old, and there were actually two of them.  I think I did pretty well- they wanted the harder jobs that were more prone to spilling popcorn everywhere, which they did with some enthusiasm.  And I let them!  I tried to maintain a nice balance of staying involved without being too managerial.  Anyway, it was cool to be around kids.  My life is mostly adult-oriented at this point.