Age of volunteering

I recently volunteered at the local dragonboat racing event. I had the choice of either helping out at the children's craft tent or marshalling the rowers at the docks.

There was some confusion in the early morning. The person at volunteer check-in asked me to go down to the dock first. At the gate, the two volunteers I encountered said that everything was fine and no additional volunteers were needed.

So, I headed over to the big tent. Along the way, I stopped at the volunteer table to tell her there was no need for additional people at the docks. Another woman had just walked up to inquire about the person in charge of the children's area. No one was there to set up.

Indeed, when I got to the tables, there was one guy opening the boxes of craft materials. It wasn't clear he knew what he was doing. Two other girls and a young boy were standing around waiting. Soon after, three girls more showed up. They looked as if they were in their teens. They were finishing their free breakfast muffins and chatting. The guy had told them to unpack things from the boxes. When they started randomly opening any package they grabbed, I cautioned them because it was obvious from looking at the boxes that the unopened supplies were extra. It made sense to use the bags that were already open first rather than have beads and foam shapes loose everywhere. I felt like a mom around all these girls.

Once everything was on the table, we stood around again. I went to get myself a muffin. While I was at the food table, I overheard one of the coordinators say they were still short two people for the docks. I let her know that there was still no coordinator for the craft tables. She then asked if I would go down to the docks, I said, "sure."

At the docks, there were three people per dock, dressed in PFDs. They looked as young as the girls at the craft tables. The coordinator was am adult, with bullhorn and clipboard in hand. He clearly had experience running this event as he was very methodical in directing the teams to their boats in an orderly fashion.

On the upper dock was one guy. He seemed a little more mature. It turns out he is a grad student. In my mind, I still couldn't help think I was probably a decade older. I was wearing a beach hat to shade my face from the sun, so maybe I looked younger to everyone.

The racing heats varied. I'd say the majority of the teams were high school groups. Boy, I wish I'd had something like this to get involved in back when I was that age. My mom would have complained about getting too dark with all that time in the sun. I would have had fun and probably made some good friends. Socially, I could have learned a lot.

I was surprised to see so many adult groups participating. I'm not talking only about the Asian teams, but also the pink team of breast cancer survivors, the German and Canadian rowers. There was the "Blind Ambition" group of blind rowers who were escorted to their boat by other teams. The variety was amazing. It reminded me that age shouldn't stop you from trying anything.

Still, I felt left out. We always had a few minutes of down time waiting for the boats to return. I stood and observed the teams interacting and wishing I was still in my twenties. I also thought about how much I'd like my children to be active and emotionally healthy in addition to being academically successful. There are so many things, so much noise to process in life. Will I be able to do everything I need and want to do (major accomplishments-wise)? While I'm still single and can do whatever I choose, there are a lot of responsibilities that I can no longer get away from so easily.

Rambling aside, here are my final thoughts. As I stood and watched all the dragonboat participants file in, load into their boats, and paddled hard through each race, I realized that volunteering is a great way to experience things I've missed in life. I enjoy doing things I normally wouldn't think of doing. On the other hand, the secondary purpose of volunteering is to meet people - make new friends or potential dates. I've noticed lately, however, that the people I meet at these events are getting younger (well, I'm actually just getting older). I still plan to volunteer, but I no longer expect to meet eligible men there because most of the singles are under 30. [sigh of sadness] Time is moving along and I feel like I've been in a holding pattern way too long.