Scooperbowl Fever

I wasn’t feeling the whole "work" scene yesterday, so I skipped out early, took a leisurely lunch, and headed to an all-you-can-eat ice cream festival for, well, all the ice cream I could eat.

Maybe it wasn’t exactly like that.

My company offers community service days to employees if we ever want to volunteer. Being the nerd I am, this was actually a pretty big selling point for me when I got my job offer. I was like, I can take time off from work to volunteer? When can I start?!

My sister volunteered at the Scooperbowl last year and told me it was right up my alley. Scoop ice cream? Me? No thanks, I got my fill of that when I worked in the dining hall. But scooping ice cream at a fundraiser for kids with cancer and then getting to eat all the ice cream I want is a little different. So I was intrigued. And by intrigued I mean hell yeah, sign me up!

Volunteering wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Popular events like this usually have a following and a strong backbone of volunteers that do it every year. Then you have the slots reserved for community groups and schools. That didn’t leave much room for the individuals like myself who wanted to get in on the free ice cream do something nice for others.

Beth’s company has a quasi-partnership w/ FedEx, who was one of the sponsors, so we got in through them. FedEx is a professional and customer service oriented business, so I figured volunteering through them would be just as seamless. You know what they say about assuming...

We arrived early for our 2:30 shift to find that our names weren’t on the volunteer list. They gave us enormous purple shirts that said FedEx. Nothing advertising the Scooperbowl or the Jimmy Fund. How generous of you, you corporate giant. We mosied over to the FedEx tent that was swimming w/ people (it had just started to rain) and saw some other fools in their purple tents shirts handing out beads. Um, what exactly do Mardi Gras beads have to do with children’s cancer or ice cream? Beth and I were there to work, not stand around promoting promiscuity. So we went from tent to tent and to see if any of the ice cream companies needed scoopers. No takers.

Finally we wandered over to the volunteer registration tent and asked the miserable-looking girl if there was anything for us to do, and she said she might have use for us at one of the water stations. The water station was two folding tables pushed together with an over sized Gatorade jug and a sleeve of cups on each table. Two women were standing behind the table, so we introduced ourselves and they said how they had just got there and, at this rate, the table was all set.

Oh, hell no. I was a professional volunteer for two years. I get shit done. Maybe our table is a little deserted now, but people flock to free items like drool on a baby and our traffic would pick up once the sun came back. I moved the remaining cups closer to the edge of the table and began filling new cups. The stage was right next to us with some band of 12-year-olds who’s mom clearly was a head honcho at the Jimmy Fund. Beth and I alternated between rocking out to their songs (all 90’s covers, go figure) and making sure the water station stayed stocked. Dehydration is no joke. And after my terrible water station experience at my half marathon, I was extra inclined to make this one a success.

After our shift was over and some volunteers took over for us (we could tell they didn’t take hydration as seriously as we did) we could wander around and eat ice cream. All the ice cream giants were accounted for. Breyer’s. Baskin-Robbins. Friendly’s. Ben & Jerry’s. At first I wanted to try all the flavors, but there were some really unappealing ones. Like some lemon seed shit, or something like that. No thank you. So I stuck w/ what I know: Chocolate. Peanut butter. Chocolate ice cream with peanut butter chunks. The usual suspects.

After sampling all the ones we were interested in, we hit up Friendly’s again, obv. Hunka Chunka PB Fudge is everything I want in an ice cream. But we only got seconds of our favorite three two flavors. I didn’t want to spoil my dinner or anything.

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