Youth's First Day of "Work" & Mishap

Saturday afternoon my son had to volunteer to work a "Bounce" event. He was selected for a leadership program which he recently participated in the three day, two night event. As part of the program, "leaders" were expected to "pay it forward" by helping to fund raise for next years leaders.

All excited and eager to help (over exaggeration by all means!) we signed up for the shortest volunteer time of the day. I didn't have to help out, but what else was I supposed to do in the meantime for 1.5 hours? We had to pre-sell tickets as well, for the exact same price as at the event (how dumb is that? Seriously?). I gave a $20 donation, therefore buying five tickets. I gave three out at work and two to MD for his kids.

T really surprised me after the event to mention, "So my first day of work..." I had to smile. He really did a good job and had fun.

The event really wasn't very exciting or well attended. I suppose in the scheme of things, it was fun for those that were there as the lines were very limited. CK from work was there with his two kids and he thanked me repeatedly for the tickets. The kids had a lot of fun and what better way to get kids out of the house for a free few hours of entertainment?

While it could have been a horrific experience, MD's two year old son was afraid of all of the bounce inflatables. He enjoyed looking at them from afar, but didn't really want much to do with them. We finally were able to coax him into one of them and MD joined him for a bit. He actually was having quite a good time and didn't want to exit. The inflatable was just the moon walk bouncer with an exit up to a slide to slide down. He just liked the bouncing part. When, what happened? MD mentioned that it sounded like it was running out of gas.

Less than a minute later, the inflatable...deflated. The handful of children were able to exit pretty quickly with the exception of MD's son. MD reached in and several of us adults did our best to hold the quickly deflating inflatable upright so as not to smother the two of them. They got out and MD's son was pretty shaken up, rightfully so. He didn't want much to do with it for quite some time, but apparently did go back in it later in the afternoon.

Tragedy diverted...