Ocean Spray

I’ve been making trips to Oregon Food Bank’s Volunteer Action Center on Tuesday nights after work for nearly a year now. That is, as my schedule allows. Which really means that I’m there if the Blazers are not playing. Anyway, I show up weekly, dawn an orange vest being as I am a part of special teams, and I move things around for 2.5 hours. There are a total of three of us, myself included, that make up special teams week in and week out. There are also the rotating cast of people that volunteer for special teams, but most of them can’t even follow a simple stack pattern and make my life harder. The other two regulars would be Enoch and Jill. Enoch is Enoch, a nice, genial man that just wants help. Jill is still in high school, writes for the school paper, and imagine is a bit of an overachiever. But still, shows up weekly because she wants to help. My own motivations are not clear to me.

Jill may or may not have a crush on me. She will endlessly flick me shit for the entire time I’m there. On Tuesday we were doing potatoes. Some people were putting potatoes into bags with a goal of making each bag weigh an exact five pounds. Special teams went around collecting these bags and dropping them off into a crate. I stood at the crate and carefully arranged the potatoes for maximum weight. Think it doesn’t matter? A crate of potatoes not stacked carefully weighed 1000 pounds. One I stacked weighed between 1157 pounds to 1210, or as Enoch would say a 16 to 21 percent improvement. Regardless, Jill felt the need to poke fun of my OCD compulsion. After about five of these comments I said “you think this is OCD you should see my bedroom.” I thought it an innocent comment; my room is always looking sharp. Then I saw her eyes widen and I realized I had just inadvertently invited an 18 year-old to come check out my bedroom. I hastened to add “or my kitchen, or living room, or backyard” after I realized my gaff. I don’t think it helped.


In totally unrelated news I took a pooper two days ago that smelled exactly like the beach. Okay, not the beach smell you think of when you exit the car for the first time and take a deep breach of ocean air. My poop smelled liked the area of the beach by the huge sewer pipes that water flows from and out into the ocean. Still, for a poop I think that’s pretty good and way better than what normally emanates from that area.


Do. You. Tap. Out?