#voluntear

During my spring program I didn’t participate in nearly as many VoluntEAR opportunities. Most of that was due to my work schedule, part of it was due to the fact that my work location just didn’t offer it as often. I searched for a VoluntEAR opportunity on the hub and found that Disney was helping with Orlando’s Relay for Life event. Relay for Life is a fundraising event for the American Cancer Society. It celebrates those who are survivors, mourns those who lost their lives to cancer, and helps build a community of those affected by cancer. I had participated in Long Beach’s Relay for Life in California before I had moved and was interested in staying involved with the event. The call for VoluntEARS described our role as helping set up and take down the event, as well as help with normal operations in between. It was in Downtown Orlando and the only shift available was a late-night one that ended early the next morning. I didn’t know anybody else going to the event but I signed up anyway. 

The night of the event, I drove to Downtown Orlando. I had sort of assumed there would be assigned parking for the event, but there wasn’t. Whatever parking people could find was all that was available, which was difficult in the heart of Orlando, especially for someone who doesn’t know how to parallel park. After driving up and down the one street with normal parking, I pulled up behind somebody who was leaving and took their spot. 

I learned that there were only a handful of VoluntEARs, and most of them already knew each other. The group was nice though and let me tag along with them when we had down time. Our first task was to take signs and put them in the grass along the path the participants would walk down. That only took about 30 minutes though, and we had time to kill before our next task. Our group decided to keep walking around the path and see how many times we could make it around over the course of the night. 

A few hours in, we were called up again to help with some events up on the stage. It was already far more eventful than the event I had been to in Long Beach. The first event was a scavenger hunt, where groups were given a list of odds and ends they had to find and bring it back to a judge. The first group to complete the majority of the list, won. The group we judged didn’t win, which was surprising because they were very creative with some of their items and we were pretty lenient. Then we judged a game of “Simon Says”, which the kids were really into. In fact they were so good that the announcer was running out of ideas. A few were out here and there, but a group of about 15 were fairly determined to win. When the announcer finally thought she had come up with a good one she proudly said it, and no kids were out. She responded with a loud “Oh shit!” right into the microphone, which resulted in a horrified gasp from parents and laughter from the kids. Instead of just smoothing it out though and moving on, she said, “Oh no! Simon doesn’t say “Oh shit!”, which resulted in her switching out with one of the Disney VoluntEARs. 

Then it was time for the main event, a candlelight walk to honor the lives taken by cancer and celebrate those surviving. It was a peaceful walk as participants softly told stories of loved ones. I had already made the walk around the dark lake several times, but this trip around felt far more meaningful. Despite the candles being simple sticks of wax poked through plastic cups, the line of people walking with them in hand was a beautiful sight to see. 

As time passed, the candle dripped significant amounts of wax on the bottom of the plastic cup. Sometimes the wax dripped through the hole the candle was going through, and other times it melted the plastic and created a new hole. One girl in our group lost her candle entirely and was left holding a plastic cup with a completely melted bottom. Mine held up decently well, but I blew it out before it could get much worse.

The path was lined with paper bags that had messages written on them by people who had lost someone they loved to cancer. Inside each paper bag was a candle, and a Boy Scout troop was responsible for trying to keep them all lit. The occasional breeze would put one out and a Boy Scout running with a lighter would race up to try to rescue it, but it was a lost cause as some bags continuously fell over in the wind. In hindsight, we’re lucky it didn’t cause a fire.

When our VoluntEAR group was tired of walking around the path, we walked to Starbucks instead to kill time before we were needed again. Once it got later, we were going to be walking around the path and pulling the signs up, redirecting the path so it was a smaller circle that was near the event’s main set-up. They didn’t want anybody to venture too far off that late at night, which is when the conversation of midnight alligators started. Apparently it’s common for alligators to hide in the darkness around midnight hours, waiting for a late night snack to wander into their hiding spot. I don’t know how true that is but it was a pretty good horror story for somebody like me who is terrified of alligators. We walked around the long path one more time, collecting signs and having a contest of who could carry the most signs by the end. 

During another break between events, we were let into the building the stage was attached to. We played cards, talked, and ate chips and salsa while we waited to be needed again. It was nearing 2am and we had 4 more hours of the event to go. When we went outside a while later, two younger kids were slow dancing on the stage together, some adults were still actively talking to each other, but most were curled up on chairs in front of the stage sleeping. Things were starting to calm down and the head of VoluntEAR group told us we could go home if we wanted. Because we had already helped with the signs, taking things down wouldn’t take long at all and they didn’t want to have us sitting there for another 3 hours. By that point we had already circled around the lake countless times and were hanging out by the stage watching the kids dance. We all decided to head home, thankful to be driving back before the sun rose.