Yesterday my daughter and I arose at the crack of dawn – I’m not exaggerating – it was 5:30 a.m., to volunteer for the Salvation Army/Target Corp. $100 shopping spree at one of the designated Target locations. We responded to a call for additional volunteers from my friend’s son’s girlfriend who is a college intern with the Salvation Army and needed more volunteers to assist children at the Commerce location. As it turns out, not only did we arrive in Commerce in record time – 7:00 a.m.when we had given ourselves an hour (the rule is to get on the freeway by 6:30 a.m. to avoid the worst of rush hour traffic and, barring an accident or Sig Alert, it is to your benefit), but the bus transporting the children was late picking up and didn’t arrive until 9:00, vs. 8:30. During that hour and a half, we had plenty of time to chat, fill out the requisite paperwork, pair up the volunteers, and go over the rules about not touching, standing outside the dressing room, going to the bathroom in pairs, having someone watch you while you were watching them and all those necessary precautions that are, sadly, a part of our modern day society of caution and fear and avoidance of lawsuits.
Once the children arrived and we were assigned to shoppers; four six-year old boys, Lisa and I introduced ourselves and set out helping Bryce, Joshua, Sky, and Yoquin spend their $100 wisely. Our job was to help them find the clothes and shoes in their size, steer them to items that were on sale or a better buy, and ensure that they had the necessary school supplies. First stop: shoes. Three of them needed shoes, one voiced a preference for Vans but once we scanned the aisles and determined there were no Vans, lightening quick they were over that and were throwing a pair in the cart. In an flash, we referred to their sizing sheet, found the correct size of the shoe style that they had fixated on, switched the box for one of the right size, and replaced the wrong size on the shelf before they jumped on the cart careening down the aisle towards unsuspecting shoppers.
Just around the corner were the boys clothes, our next stop, to fulfill Joshua’s priority request: a pair of skinny jeans. His sheet stated a size 10 for pants, perhaps his parents wanted a pair for him to grow into, because he could almost fit into one of the legs of the size 10 with 4 inches of length to spare. Knowing exactly how skinny jeans are supposed to look: tight around the leg and its OK for them to skim the cuff of your sneakers – not the top of the shoe, the size 6 fit the requirements (the size 8 was also too big). Hopefully his parents won’t be disappointed when Joshua’s skinny jeans become capris in about a semester. It was an article of clothing that could be worn to school and with his big eyes and beaming smile, who could deny him?
Next stop, school supplies in the far corner of the store for backpacks, paper, pencils, crayons, glue, etc. Initially this was a free for all – it was as if the boys were told that they had 5 minutes to fill their cart with all the school supplies they could grab. Fortunately, Yoquin was a careful shopper blessed with an organized mother who sent him on his shopping spree with a complete list of necessary school supplies. Yoquin and Lisa calmly determined the best values in crayons, i.e. the Rose Art 24 pack for just a few cents more than the 12 pack of Crayolas, while I took the other three to decide on a backpack. Then we gathered near the carts and went through the checklist; Yoquin would show the other boys where the items were, they would run and grab them while I restocked all the miscellaneous items that had been thrown in the cart.
In the end, it was a successful shopping spree – everyone was happy and no one went over their $100. The two clothes hounds, Bryce and Joshua, came within $9 and Sky and Yoquin, whose only clothes purchases were socks and a tee shirt, went home with enough to buy supplies for another brother or sister. And we went home with a few laughs and the warm, fuzzy feeling you get from helping others.
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