For many of you who probably didn’t know, today is National Make a Difference Day. To celebrate such an unknown holiday (this is the first time I have ever heard of it), I became a gardener for two hours and helped pull out weeds and dead plants at Tempe Park; nevertheless, that is not where the fun begins, it actually begins on the way to the park.
First off, being that I’m from California, I was surprised that instead seeing child safety as a top priority on the bus (which was your typical yellow school bus), it was actually making sure there were no sleeping children on the bus. Even though this is probably a precaution for children who might faint from heat stroke, it just still seems weird that there were two signs saying “have you checked your bus for sleeping children”. Seriously Arizona, you know your state is too hot when you have to worry about sleeping children.
Anyway, back to the bus ride, so apparently, the bus drivers did not know where they were going or how to use GPS, because they tried to drop us off in front of a hotel. And to make things even more stressful, one of the bus drivers tried to get hard and act like she wasn’t wrong, when someone tried to show here where the right destination was (which was probably 20 feet from where we were, so it wasn’t that big of a deal). I’m not going to lie though, the bus drivers did a pretty amazing job backing out of the hotel parking lot, I could of swore there were at least five times the bus was going to hit another car. But no, drivers must be taught well in Arizona, because she was close, but no cigar.
So we finally get to the park, the real fun begins. There are at least 70 people who come to the park, but somehow my group of ten people get stuck doing a job that at least 25 people should be doing. Eager to get our community service on, we get straight to work and begin pulling out weeds and digging out dead plants. About 10 minutes into, the sprinklers just shoot on and it was gradual either, it was like getting hit with a water hose, making it that much harder to work. While the weeds were so easy to pull out, taking out dead plants is probably the hardest thing I have ever done. They were so deep in the ground that I thought I was going to find a dead body eventually and on top of that, all the dead plants were planted around a tree that had thorns, so while you were using all you energy trying to get these stupid plants out, you were constantly trying to avoid being stabbed by this stupid tree.
So for two hours, I undug many bushes, took out a whole lot of weeds and probably used enough trash bags to fill one landfill. The highlight of the community service, aside from the bonding and meeting new people is that fact that I got to see my first Scorpion and the fact that the sprinklers came on for a second time, feeling really great after working so hard in the sun.
I’m not going to lie, out of all the community service I have done, this is the first time I actually felt like I did work. It was an amazing experience and I will probably do it again next year, I just hope I can get more people to do it with me.
Song of the post: “Relator” by Pete Yorn featuring Scarlett Johansson