Hidden Talents and Vibrant Volunteers 3

Well, I've been meaning to do a Hidden Talents update, but life's kept me busy and now we're into the Friday of Vibrant Volunteers week.

During Hidden Talents, I busted out the fanny pack. As it was a symbol of last year's group, I was hoping for a dramatic time when I would have to call on the strength of the Fanny Pack. But as things moved forward, I came to realize things were not going to go out of hand, and that a fanny pack is really useful for keeping attendance sheets and weekly schedules.

On Tuesday we had a Karate blackbelt come in to teach us a few basic techniques, give us a history of the art, show us some katas (fights against imaginary opponents, kind of like a dance), and show us some weapons. This person was related to someone on the team, so we got a free show. It was pretty cool, like a second Wednesday special visitor.

Our special Wednesday visitor though, was Five the magician. Two years ago we had Five, and he dazzled and amazed us. I know I've said this before, but I find magic shows all the more incredible as an adult than as a child. As a child, I would just write it off as being magic and accept it. As an adult, I know magic in this form is not real, and I've watched videos and heard things on how it's done. But even when you try to look in diagonal motions when he's moving linearly, you're still left to wonder how he made a balloon turn into a rabbit when the rabbit is larger, or how he turned a fire into a live dove. It taunts you.

But while Five's tricks two years ago were amazing, his stage presence was lacking. One time, he pulled one of our people from the crowd, gave her a cup of water and told her to throw it at him when he shouted "Red Alert!" Without prompt, the cup of water got thrown into him and he had to stand awkwardly in his soaking suit.

He tried to be a mind reader for one of our guys, and the person who came up lied about his name, exploiting his inability to read minds. Five tried to give humorous fake-out predictions "You're thinking about eating lots of vegetables!" but our guy would just say, "Hey, that's right!" making his obvious attempt to be wrong fall flat.

He put a bunch of scarves into a hat and upturned it, letting them all fall out, which was supposed to be an intentionally bad show before moving on to more convincing tricks. But our group gave him an applause, to which he stammered that he'd never been with an audience so kind.

He kept trying to use the program leaders as examples for tricks until we rejected him. Then he wanted our coordinator to select people who could perform his tasks. Then he had to check in to see if they could stand in a line for balloon animals.

Next year, we had two magicians who were more charismatic but with weaker tricks. One moved around a puppet and pretended it was alive, then started pulling coins out of peoples ears. Like every Mom ever doesn't know that one.

This year, Five's tricks were as spectacular as ever, and his stage presence was so much stronger. He really blossomed into a beautiful magician. He gave a list of balloon animals he could make at the end, which I respect. Nobody should leave themselves vulnerable to whatever the requester decides for a balloon animal. But when someone asked for a squirrel, he said he couldn't do it and offered a rabbit. But when someone asked for an Incredible Hulk, he went for it. Like come on Five, just make a rabbit with shorter ears and a longer tail and call it a squirrel.

Our Friday trip was bowling and a movie. I got my one mandatory strike in while bowling, so I was satisfied. The movie we watched was Secret Life of Pets, a story about how pets are more intelligent than we give them credit for, a theme I feel I've often seen revisited. The other option was Finding Dory, which I've seen before, so I was happy to see something new just for the diversity.

Last year we watched Minions, which I really did not enjoy too much. But because of the nature of my work, I wound up watching it four times.


For Vibrant Volunteers, I got to facilitate for a flower pot painting activity. Last year, I may have mentioned that we did a flower pot painting activity and that it produced a great revelation inadvertently surrounding pen theft. We leave our crafts on our front desk to be picked up by participants. When they are not picke dup, they kind of remain as a decoration. Our flower pots are made of painted flower pots, artificial flowers taped to pens with green painter's tape wrapped around to give the impression of a stem, and marbles to replicate earth. This year we got fake moss to replicate the earth.

But in years previous, people would pluck a flower from its pot and write from it. We never had a pen thief using this method, because nobody would absent-mindedly leave a pot empty or expect someone not to notice. Like the gentlest way to discourage people from stealing pens.

We have two beautiful tarps for tarp toss, which was made by staff from last year. This year I got to present it. Like a gigantic target board. |Somebody suggested that for Wacky Water Week, the Program Leaders put their face through the bulls eye and have people try to hit them with water balloons. I've pitched this to the rest of the team,

We had a volunteer group go out to a community centre and help facilitate activities for children on Tuesday and Thursday. We got to make Froot Loops bracelets, construction paper puppets, build cities out of boxes, design a banner, and make melt bead art.

On Wednesday we went to the Family Centre, where we had a number of stations, including baking cookies, cleaning, visual art, pinwheel or benner making, and a musical piece. The musical piece we chose was Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Arguably the most daring choice stacked up against "Twinkle twinkle little star" and "Mary had a little lamb".

On Friday we went to the Moluntsberg Conservation Area, where we attended a Bird of Prey show, went to a petting zoo, and had access to an all-purpose fun zone.

We got to see another camp use teal-green for their shirt colour before we saw anyone else use pylon-orange. This validated my suggestion t o change the shirt colours. We had another group have a number of counselors have differing shirt colours depending on who was in their small group, including Pylon-orange, but it didn't catch on. It was a fantastically hot day though. Somehow a group coaxed me into being the only staff to play Manhunt in their adult-sized playground.