A Day In The Sun

This past weekend was our Sand and Surf Summer Festival at our Senior Living Community down in Yorba Linda California, commonly knows as the Fiesta. I have never heard of the origin of this event, but it is traditionally held the first weeked in June at our SLC and each Grand Officer and her or his subordinate officers from all over the State fill and man a booth of stuff to sell to those who attend. In addition, it is traditional for last year's Grand Family to have a booth, the WGM's fraternal mom's year to man a booth, the Deputies and Grand Representatives to each have a booth and the SLC residents have one too. Some of the appointive Grand Officers go in together on one bigger booth. When you add some vendors, it can make for a fair number of booths. There are also other attractions set up. This year there was a car show in the morning and a health fair all day with different providers and several vendor booths. I have discovered that it is more fun doing this as a Grand Line Officer than as an Appointive Officer. For starters, your subordinate officers are your girls and you've not only had more chances to meet them and get to know them, but you are all thinking of yourselves as in it together for the long haul, so I think that it is easier to find people to help with the booth. All our members are great about volunteering to help, but some appointive offices tend to attract more older members or those less able to walk so it can be hard to find helpers to man a booth for a whole day. The other advantage of being in the Line is that the Line Officers pretty much have traditional booths to man, mostly involving food items, and while you can do whatever you like, it is simply easier to do a known booth and especially a food booth where it's been done before and most of the bugs are out. Since we pick in protocol order, the Line Officers have the advantage there as well. While there are a few appointive officers that have traditional booths, such as the Chaplains selling books, others do not have it so easy. The others have to come up with some sort of something to sell that fits the theme of the event, which changes every year, and have few if any prior examples to tell them how to do this. So between less people and less experience, it is just all around tougher. All our Grand Officers were troopers though, and came up with some great ideas. So early in your year of service, you identified the poor, confused soul who couldn't get out of the way of the train fast enough, I mean the wonderful, enthusiastic volunteer, who agreed to serve as the Chairman for your booth. This person is supposed to go to meetings to find out about the set up and rules and such and is then in charge of getting out a flyer and signing up volunteers to man the booth through the day. This is also a mixed bag sort of situation. Two years ago, my Chairman fell of the face of the planet and was never heard from again. They didn't go to any of the meetings and didn't come the day of the event. Can you say thirty foot Twinkie bad? Guess who ended up doing all the set up and manning the booth all day? I still say a small prayer of thanks for the two members who had mercy on me that day and gave me a teeny bit of time off to grab a meal and use the bathroom. Luckily, that was the low water mark and my booths and Chairs have been getting better ever since. This year they did fabulous! Each booth was named for a beach and we were the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and some dear friends brought decorations and name tags and cups and taffy and everything! The sign looked great too! We sold hot coffee and hot tea, but only a bit in the morning because it heated up right quick, and we sold icy frappachinos and iced tea all afternoon. We refilled both frappachino machines and went through over twelve gallons of iced tea. It was awesome! However, it was a tough day for me on a personal level. You see, I am sun soluble. Vampires like the sun more than I do, I fear. You see, when the sun hits them, they burn and die. When the sun hits me, I burn and have to live with the pain. I think they've got the better deal. People think I am exaggerating, but even twenty minutes in the unprotected sun and I am turning red, an hour and you are going to mistake me for a boiled lobster. You'll have to notice that I don't have drawn butter dripping off me to tell the difference. I slathered on the sun screen and I wore a huge hat, but I still managed to singe my left shoulder (the hat tilted to the right) and my nose a bit (sometimes I had to take the hat off in the wind.) But wait, there's more . . . Even standing in a booth so the sun is not directly on me helps some, but not enough. Just looking out of the booth into the bright day all day is enough to burn my eyeballs out of their sockets. I know exactly how that evil Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Ark felt as his eyeballs melted down his head. But again, he has it easy. He melted and died. I melt and have to ache all night and all day. There is no way I have yet seen to put sunscreen on the backs of my eyeballs. Now I do have prescription sunglasses and I bet you are wondering why I didn't wear them. Well, when you are trying to be friendly with the members and are trying to sell them stuff, eye contact is very important. No one likes to deal with a person where you can't see their eyes, so you sell more stuff and are more open and accessible to people when you are not wearing sunglasses, unless the tint is so light as to be merely an accent color. Unfortunately, I have my sunglasses tinted so dark that people wonder if I am blind because no one can see through that much dark. So if I want to be able to see people and talk with them and interact with them well, I can't wear the sunglasses. The moral of the story is . . . . . Sun BAD!!! Just to add insult to injury, Sunday was another outdoor festival thing, so I have now had my quota of sun for the entire summer. I just want to crawl back into the nice dark, deep cave from which I emerged and come out only at night. I doubt I will get that, but you can't get what you don't ask for, right? Despite the sun though, the day was a lot of fun with good food and better company, lots of wonderful visitors and friends with whom to chat and great entertainment too. Next weekend I am in Roseville, Carmichael and Stockton. I will not be in Oroville or West Sacramento because I took a day and a bit off work last week and am taking a day next week, so I can't take another two days this week.