Kids Back to School Fun Day

OK, so I know it's common to have fun at something you thought would be a not-so-fun event. But when it touches your heart too, well, that is just a bonus.

Let me start by saying the Hutchinson Volunteer Police Patrol did an excellent job of organizing this event. This was the first year so it was filled with unknowns. But they shot blind and did an awesome job. By estimations of raffle tickets handed out and  hot dogs served, it looks like we had just about 200 kids come through. There were games, tons of prizes, a dunk tank -dunk a policeman, which for some reason lots of people wanted to do......I'm just sayin'..... inflatable jumpy thingys for the kids, fire trucks, the fire safety house and ident-a- kid. There were hot dogs, orange drink and cotton candy......yep, can you say sugar high? The big prizes were two bicycles donated by Walmart, one boy's bike and one girl's. I worked registration, under the tent in the shade, a pretty plumb assignment actually. The kids ranged in age from 1 to 17. The tweens or about 10-14 all really eyed the bikes and all totally "needed" them.  The boys bike was the first one and he was busy getting cotton candy and didn't even realize he had one at first. Then about an hour later the girls bike was given.

Let me back up and tell you about one little girl in particular.....she was about 11 and spent a large part of the day at the registration booth just talking to us. Totally as cute as could be. She had spent some of her time at the tricycle obstacle course and won about 10 medals for that. Well we soon ran out of medals and the kids arriving later were a bit diappointed that the prize was then boxes of sidewalk chalk. The little girl was standing at registration with her 10 medals around her neck and heard one little girl ask if there were any more and me reply no, we ran out. A few minutes later she just kind of vanished and I thought she had gone to play more games and when she returned she had the biggest smile and said, guess what and then proceeded to tell me that she went and found the other little girl and gave her one of her medals. I asked what she did with the rest and she said she gave them to kids that didn't have any.......it was very touching. And the best part was she did it on her own and was happy to do it.

Well, she spent alot of time just sitting on the bike and making comments about how much she wanted it and how pretty it was. She also made the comment that she didn't have a bicycle at all. Well, you guessed it.......I picked the ticket and sure enough it was hers......I could have just cried. She hopped right on it and rode all around the parking lot and had the biggest smile ever. I found out later that she had 4 siblings and her mother is a single parent.

I really don't believe in "karma" but if I did, this would be a perfect example of it. This was supposed to be a fun day for kids, which it was, but it was a learning day for this old kid too.