Summer of Excitement: Special Olympics - [a case of the summer]

Well, as you can see, I've been slagging off already.  I actually did have a Summer of Excitement post to report last week, but it was insanely busy and I didn't have an opportunity to do so.  Therefore, this post really refers to the week of June 22nd.  And as this Summer of Excitement feature is in an evolution process, I've decided to not "force things" even further.  If I have nothing to write, I won't.  If I write it late, so be it.  Maybe I should rename this the Summer of Relaxation?  Anyway, this week I'll discuss the excitement that was my volunteering at the Special Olympics games!

My workplace was one of the many sponsors of this year's Special Olympics (along with a little company known as WWE) and as a result, we were encouraged to volunteer if your schedule permitted.  I, along with the rest of the marketing team, devoted our day to the Flag Football competition.  Yes, it was rewarding.  And definitely a once in a lifetime experience, but man....was it grueling!

I joke that I definitely feel mislead about what I was getting in for.  My assignment was "ball retriever," which meant -- as I was told -- if the ball was overthrown I would have to run to get it so that they could begin the next play.  Unfortunately, that is NOT what it was.  Instead, I had to run to go grab the ball EVERY SINGLE PLAY and, once again, EVERY SINGLE PLAY I would have to run a fresh ball over to the line of scrimmage.  And if the line of scrimmage changed, I would have to reset it.  So I was running out into the center of the field every single play of every single game.  It was absolutely exhausting.  Not to mention that it was 100 degrees out (SLIGHT exaggeration) and I wore pants since I didn't know I'd be doing THAT much activity.  There's a girl I was working with who is about 100 times more active with fitness than I am, who didn't run as much as me, who was absolutely exhausted as well.  Imagine how I felt!

Finally, for the last two games, we had to switch with the people who were announcing because we felt so dead.  So there I was -- the guy who knows absolutely nothing about sports -- doing announcing on the loud speaker for a flag football game at the Special Olympics.  And I only got yelled at twice to stick to the script!

It was definitely an interesting experience.

Oh yeah, check back at 7:30-ish for my Money in the Bank LIVE thoughts!