The Fog

One Sunday, I was scheduled to park sit and woke up to a thick fog.  I carefully drove to the park to have the gate opened by  7:15am.  The park was covered in fog.  I couldn't see to the other side of the park.  It was cold, misty and just plain foggy.  Imagine my surprise when at 7:30, I see cars in the parking lot and people jogging along the trail.  I just wanted to shout, "Go home people, it is a foggy, miserable day!"

Thankfully for me, I had the park's maintenance office to spend the day in.  I'd go out every hour to check on things around the park.  I would make sure the bathrooms were clean, the trashes were empty and no one had started a fire in the shelter's fireplaces.  The shelters have fireplaces, but you are not allowed to have fires in them.  Go figure.

The fog didn't lift until about two in the afternoon and it was back by five.  It didn't matter, though.  The park was filled the entire day with dedicated park goers and joggers.  When the park closed at 5:30, it was almost dark and a thick fog laid across its open fields.  I actually had to go kick people out of the park.  Go home!  It is time for a blanket and a mug of hot cocoa.

The park sitter observes football

I am a park ranger.  Well, more of a park monitor or park sitter.  I work in county parks.  Not the great lovely national parks.  County parks, which are complete with baseball diamonds, soccer fields, play grounds, walking trails, wide open spaces to run in and shelters with picnic tables.

I've seen and done some interesting things.  I've only been working this job four months and only in the fall and winter.  I'm sure spring and summer will only bring more stories as people come out of their warm homes to the fresh, warm, humid air.

I came on in October.  The days were getting shorter and the nights cooler, but many days were still warm and pleasant.  It was mid-football season.  Football.  It is a highly misunderstood sport - by me.  I don't get it at all.  Why would anyone want to put on 10 lbs of plastic gear and run head first into someone else wearing 10 lbs of plastic gear? 

Apparently, I am not the only one baffled by this sport.  Each week, hanging out on the playground next to the football fields were four girls who looked to be the ages of 9-11.  They would sit on top of the monkey bars and talk.  I imagine they met at the first football game and formed the "I'm Stuck at the Playground and Bored Out of My Mind While My Dumb Brother Plays Football Club."  Similar clubs exist during baseball and soccer seasons.

My own brothers played soccer.  The first couple of years, I had to go to all the games.  Luckily for me, my best friend lived next door to my brothers best friend, who played on the same team as my brother.  She would often come to the games and we would hang out together.  Is that a best friend, or what?  She didn't have to come to the games, but she did, just so we could hang out together.

There were no bleachers at the field my brother played on.  You brought your own lawn chairs and blankets.  My friend and I would alternate watching the game, walking around the field, or sitting in the grass, making clover flower necklaces.

So, I feel for these sisters - drug off to games they have no interest in, sitting on the monkey bars with other sisters, plotting their revenge on their brothers.  Just wait until drill team starts, mister!

 

Park Maintenance

Thankfully maintenance is not my job.  I have no interest in the upkeep of baseball fields, performing repairs, checking sprinkler systems, and the like.  Especially in the cold winters or hot summers.  I wouldn't mind mowing the grass on the soccer fields, IF it involved a riding lawn mower with a roof.

However, on the days I park sit, I am responsible for the trash cans.  I learned that certain parks, during football season, managed to collect tons of trash.  Ten huge trash barrels surround the field.  During the course of the day, each barrel fills with trash.  These barrels are as high as my waist and when full of trash, are quite heavy.  My job is to empty the barrels.  Somehow, I am required to maneuver  holding a trash bag over the barrel, pick the barrel up, hold it upside down and shake it until all the trash falls from the barrel and into the bag.

I am not strong or coordinated enough to do this successfully.  Most of the time, I manage to dump half of the trash onto the ground thanks to the bag slipping off the rim of the barrel while I was holding it upside down.  When this happens, I mumble a "gosh dang-it" and I stoop down to pick up the trash and throw it into the bag.  There are people all around, watching football games.  I'm sure that they find me much more entertaining than the game.  I'm waiting for them to bring their folding chairs over, sit in a semi-circle around the trash barrel and sip from their cans of soda while watching me as I attempt to be a good park sitter and empty the trash cans.  I am the new spectator sport. 

I developed a deep dislike of coffee one fall day.  A competition of cheerleaders was scheduled to begin at nine.  This meant that by 8:30, the parking lot was full and the park was populated by little girls in cheerleader costumes with their shivering moms in coats, clutching cups of gas-station coffee and cursing themselves for signing their daughters up for cheerleading in the first place.

By the end of the competition, at lunch-time, the day had warmed up to a pleasant temperature.  Coats had been shed, cheers had been cheered and trophies handed out.  They went home.  Football games would be starting soon, so I decided it would be a good time to collect the trash.

The trash barrels were filled with the coffee cups that had previously been the cold cheerleader mom's life line.  I'll never understand why they paid for a large coffee, only to drink half of it and throw the rest away.  By the time I had dumped the first trash barrel into the garbage bag and ground, I was covered in coffee.  The trash bags, which had no holes in them, were dripping cold coffee.  It just seeped through the plastic of the bags.  I put the trash bags into the bed of the park's golf car-like maintenance truck and drove them to the far side of the parking lot to the dumpsters.  I proceeded to toss the bags into the dumpsters, successfully managing to get even more coffee on me.  The truck bed had pools of tan-colored coffee in it. I left that mess for the park's maintenance people.  They can wash it out later.

I'm looking forward to summer, when the coffee cups will be replaced with sodas and the trash barrels will be swarming with bees.  Good times are yet to come.

Baptism by Fire: Basketball

Years and years ago, I probably surprised my family by studying recreation in college.  I hated sports.  But to me, recreation was more about camping and being outdoors than sports.  I had dreams of being a camp director, living and working in the forests and teaching kids how to cook on a 'buddy burner.'

So I got my degree in recreation and did some work along those lines, but not much.  Instead I fell in love, got married and had kids.

Now the kids are older and I decided to look for a part time job.  I got one with the local park and recreation department.  I had come home to my degree.

Sort of....

I enjoy working at the parks, even when I'm emptying trash cans filled with baggies of dog poo.  But last week, the parks and rec basketball season began. I don't like sports and I know very little of the games.  I thought I would simply be monitoring the gyms, leaving the game to the players, coaches and refs  But no, that is not quite what it turned out to be.

Come to find out, I have to make sure the scoreboard and clock are run correctly and that the official score book is kept.  I don't have to work these things myself, the teams provide one parent to do these two jobs.  However, guess who has to train the parents on how to run the clock and keep the book:  ME!  Yes, the girl who knows nothing about basketball has to keep track of the game, the clock, the possession arrow (don't even ask me to explain it, I'm still trying to understand the arrow), the points, and the fouls.  In three days last week, I sat through 14 games.

I'm learning a lot about basketball.  By the end of the season, I imagine I'll be quite the expert in parks and rec basketball.  It is fun.  I enjoy cheering for both teams since I'm on neither side.  I love the 8 year olds who run the same court and shoot the same hoops as the 17 year olds.  There are a lot fewer points in those 8 year old games.  Their games run a little slower.  It's good.  It has given me the chance to learn the game.  Saturday I watched a game where the players were 15-17 years old.  That was a fast moving game with lots of points.  I couldn't keep up.  Thankfully, the two guys running the clock and the book were TOTALLY into basketball and knew exactly what was going on at all times.  I quit trying to keep up and I just sat back and watched the game. 

Who would have guess that I, of all people, would be working a job with sports.  My mother is getting a good laugh over this one, I can tell you that.