Hidden Talents Round 4

Last week was Hidden Talents themed. Our special guest was a couple of painters who instructed us as we painted a sunset/sunrise with something silhouetted against it. As you may know, I developed a taste for painting last year, and while I'm not much compared to other members of the family (common interest that I picked up late) and I kind of learned to hate the art world (Artworld?) between my Art and Society class, and my project on Malevich  (Black Square guy) for Russian Studies, I still have fun. I got absorbed enough in it I felt more like a participant of the program. Participants around me were cheering me on, somebody said "Try not to startle Gryphon, I don't want him to make a mistake when he's doing such a good job" and the instructor wanted to take a picture of me with my painting. That kind of encouragement and acknowledgement is usually directed toward participants, not leaders, so it was a little weird. I really did like my painting though. I did a silhouette of a tree and some birds. I made the colours darker around the sun, though, and made them fade lighter with distance, which doesn't make any sense. Oh well.

Our day trip was bowling and a movie. Last week we did bowling as well, so I was a little more practiced this time around, and I think it showed. Last time, I got one strike which bounced off a bumper, and this time I got four strikes with one that bounced off a bumper. So basically, I got three strikes this time, and I didn't get any last time.

I feel like I hit the bumper more often than I'd get gutter balls if the bumpers weren't there. The security of having the bumpers seems to take away some of the pressure, and it hurts my game.

For some reason, everyone on my team would only use pink bowling balls, so I had to stock up on those. Somebody from the lane next over bounced their bowling ball and it flew our direction. I thought their ball would end up in our lane and stealing someone's turn, but instead it wedged itself behind a bumper. Someone managed to get a gutter ball when the gutters were blocked.

The movie we watched was Ant Man and The Wasp. I'd never seen the original Ant Man, but it didn't hurt the experience too much. They had a kind of creative way of incorporating a synopsis of the previous movie partway into the film, which helped. Definitely one of the more lighthearted of the Marvel superhero movies, and the most obscure superhero that they have decided to highlight.

At the end of the movie, one of our participants pointed to Ant Man and said "I want to be just like him". I said, "Yeah, he's your hero?" and he said "Yeah, I want to be just like Iron Man!"

I flipped, "He's Ant Man! We just watched a whole movie on him!"

I support a guy who is into the Marvel superhero movies, so I've seen most of them. I was depressed to realize that, when one of the participants brought in his extensive collection of Marvel action figures, I was able to identify each one.

A big draw to Hidden Talents week is our talent show, where everybody takes a turn making a performance. 90% of them decide to sing (just like my high school's talent show) but we had that one participant do his action figure show & tell, and we had somebody shoot basketball hoops.

One of our guys wanted to dance to Shake it Off by Taylor Swift, but he wouldn't do it unless I was his backup dancer. And then when we got there, he kind of hid back shyly and I was stuck as the sole dancer. If you don't know Shake it Off, it's a highly energetic song about a woman who gets over negativity by shaking it off on the dance floor. Not something I would volunteer to dance to on stage.

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWlot6h_JM

Thankfully, he got his confidence partway through and started doing somersaults and spinning and breaking out dance moves and I got to fade into the background like a proper backup dancer.

The leaders got put in costumes as well, so this is what I was wearing.

I haven't mentioned it, but in years previous we have had a bus and a van to transport everyone for swimming days and day trips. Depending on the week, we would would sometimes have more 1-to-1 workers, which would make it difficult to arrange transportation. This year, we don't have the van, but we are using two buses to get everywhere. This makes things way more convenient.

One of them is a regular yellow school bus and the other is a white accessibility bus. For whatever reason, I usually wind up on the accessibility bus. I used to shout "WHO'S EXCITED TO GO SWIMMING?", "WHO HAD FUN SWIMMING?", "CAN I GET A BIG THANK YOU FOR OUR BUS DRIVER?" etc., but for whatever reason, the accessibility bus tends to get chosen by quieter types, so I haven't been able to shout.

We used to have a very specific bus driver that we would special request every year. He took the time to get to know the leaders and participants, and would sometimes attend our field trips and would go to the I Choose Dignity rally, so besides being a bus driver, he was also active in our cause. Last year, he wasn't able to work for us, for unknown reasons. So this year, we have two new drivers. Yellow bus driver is more energetic, and white bus driver is more chill.

I forgot to mention, but during our training weeks, we did an Escape Room. That's where you're locked in a room with a bunch of hidden clues and as a team you have to piece them together to escape. We did this in my last year of Summer Program, which was two years ago, and they did it last year, although I wasn't around. You have an hour to complete the challenge. In my previous attempt, we only made it 55% of the way. Last year, they almost made it out but didn't manage it. This year, we made it! We used 58 minutes and fifty three seconds of our hour, but we did it!