Volunteering can be tricky

My children’s school requires parents to volunteer their time. I believe the requirement is five hours a year. Not bad right? Technically, my five hours were up that time I drove a car full of 4th grade boys to a cultural fair and spent the day bankrolling lemonade purchases after all their money “disappeared” near the cotton candy stand.

But since my kids are doing great in a school with caring and dedicated teachers, I don’t mind helping whenever I can. Looking over the list of duties for their Chanukah Dinner, I figured right away what had to be the worst job: Cleanup Duty.

You see, I’ve spent the last nine years cleaning up after three boys. That’s right: three. When the doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital pulled Oldest and Youngest out of me, begging to play video games and complaining about the cold, Husband added diaper changing and burping to his resume, which meant there was no longer room for clearing plates and throwing underwear into the hamper. Cleaning up after the entire student body and their parents sounded like an extension of my daily routine – times five hundred and fifty.

No thanks.

Instead, I picked Food Duty.

After arriving at my post, I found Esther, the Volunteer Coordinator.

“What can I do?” I asked.

Esther led me to a table filled with cupcakes and brownies.

“You’re our dessert monitor,” she said.

I looked at her, puzzled.

“What’s a dessert monitor?” I asked.

“We didn’t expect so many people.” Esther nervously glanced over at the latke station, where a crowd gathered. “They can only take one, a brownie or a cupcake. Not both.”

Before I could ask another question, Esther ran off toward the latkes screaming, “One tablespoon of apple sauce, Miriam Rosenbaum, one tablespoon!”

I turned toward the Table of Sin and sighed. If I could keep my hands off the sweets myself, I figured I could stop others. I put my hands behind my back and smiled.

For about two minutes.

That’s when the crowd, who had tapped Esther of her strength, turned toward me. Actually, most of the kids and adults were well-behaved. They reached for one or the other, the decadent and delicious-looking brownies were most popular, and then moved on to the drink station to complete the cycle.

But a few, oh good God, a few…

And I didn’t have much patience to begin with.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” I said to a little boy with both desserts on his plate. “We only have enough for one each.”

“He can have mine!” his mother yelled.

“I swear to you,” another mother told me as she collected five brownies, “I have five kids.”

Who has five kids nowadays?

“You aren’t fooling anyone.” Esther snuck up from behind and grabbed three brownies off her plate. “This is Kol Ami, not St. Patrick’s and besides, your little Rachel is big enough.”

Esther shook her head at me before running off to supervise menorah lighting. Afraid I was in danger of losing this high-paying gig, I threw my shoulders back, sucked in my stomach, and stopped smiling.

It was time to go Mossad on these people.

A toddler tried to shove three brownies in his pockets. My glare alone stopped him.

A teenager and his girlfriend tried to distract me with stories about vegetable “allergies” and hunger pangs.

The President of the PTA said that Weight Watchers allowed her to skip dinner and catch up on points with two cupcakes.

None of them broke me.

One senior citizen grabbed a handful of cupcakes and when I explained the rules, he tried to pretend his hearing aid wasn’t working.

“Don’t make me throw you out, Dad,” I said with a sneer.

Then I saw her, a challenge to dessert monitors everywhere: Rosie Silver. Rosie, at three hundred pounds, inched herself along in a manual wheelchair, using her feet because her hands were busy holding an overstuffed plastic plate piled high with salad, vegetables, pasta alfredo, lasagna, three latkes, two tablespoons of apple sauce and three buttered rolls.

She moved her feet in order to move her wheelchair, creeping along until she got to my table.

Rosie reached for a cupcake and balanced it precariously on top of her food.

Rosie was a master. I would have dropped that three-day meal after the second latke, but she kept the food on the plate and out of her lap with grace and ease.

When she licked her fingers and reached for the brownies, I took a deep breath and stepped in front of her. Lesser women have lost their lives that way.

“You can only have one,” I said, as politely as possible.

“One what?” she barked.

“One dessert.” I perspired, wondering if Esther was watching.

After a few excruciating seconds, where Rosie seemed to calculate the odds of taking me on, she finally shrugged and used her feet to creep the wheelchair into the dining room.

I exhaled and looked around the room.

No one seemed to notice my brush with death and, after the crowd died down, I called it a day. Grabbing a plate of salad, I smiled at a weary, but grateful Volunteer Coordinator and ignored Rosie’s glare.

“How did it go, Dessert Monitor?” Husband asked when I sat down.

I sighed and cursed alcohol-free open bars.

“Next year, remind me to try Cleanup Duty.”