The pumpkin carriage

Over the course of their children’s education, from kindergarten through high school, attentive parents find themselves volunteering for all sorts of odd projects. Bake sales and magazine drives do little to tax the mind of the mindful parent. Which is not to say participation in such events is entirely free of stress. But at least these events are fairly standard fare and thus well understood by the other parents and former parents who are called upon to serve as customers.

But there were many things we volunteered to do even though we didn’t really know how we would get them done. We’d never run concessions at the ice rink until the evening we found ourselves in charge. Serving as Girl Scout cookie managers was something of a pain. Both times.

Mary did more than her share of service as a PTA officer and as I’ve said before, I did my share of scooping for the ice cream socials and sweeping up after the various functions. We took vacation days from work the first week of school in order to make sure all the other parents’ kids got on the right buses, found their rides, or hooked up with brothers or sisters for the walk home.

Volleyball matches found Mary scoring and moi wielding the red flag of the line judge and I might say I cut quite a figure, marking my unerring and inalterable rulings with a certain artistic flourish.

The times we served as chaperones and duty drivers are uncountable, ranging from simply riding along on field trips to Mary leading a choir tour to Korea. That one involved several months of preparation that amounted to a second part-time job for both of us.

But easily the volunteer activity that makes me shake my head to this day is the time we volunteered to build the pumpkin carriage for Cinderella. The thing about building a pumpkin carriage is that there just aren’t any plans to be had at the local builders’ emporium. And certainly none of our friends among the usual suspects of parent volunteers had any idea how to build a carriage to the following specifications:

·         Shaped like a pumpkin (okay, duh);

·         Able to be drawn by two actor/horses;

·         With a bench seat fit for a princess;

·         And a step upon with the coachman could perch;

·         Designed  to be folded to fit in the wings of the high school theatre when not in use;

·         And built on a non-existent budget.

In short, an actual coach. Shaped like a pumpkin.

We did it. Mary and I have always been good at figuring out how to do things but this one definitively had us in a quandary for awhile. I must say it turned out wonderfully, was much heralded by the actors and audience members alike and presented one of our prouder parent volunteer moments.

And I still can’t imagine what mental aberration led us to volunteer to build it.