Well, I wasn't supposed to be in charge of the rock climb, but I became in charge. So, last Saturday our church held our annual fest festival, which is free to anyone and everyone and advertised in our area, including the elementary schools. The festival has games, inflatables, music and free food. We spent the first hour or so walking around and having fun. Then we got to the rock climb. It was an inflatable but you actually had to walk up on it to get to the climbing area, which means that there were lots of kids on it jumping while they waited their turn to climb. It was total chaos. There were two employees from the inflatable rental company working the climbing area and no one was in front handling the kids. As you can imagine, when you open up something like this to the public, you get all sorts of people, including people who don't watch their kids (a huge pet peeve of mine). Well, the employees were begging the kids to stop jumping as it was making their jobs hard and asking the kids to stand on the ground and not get on the inflatable, etc. Was anyone listening? Were the parents listening? Well, some were but most were nowhere to be seen. The guy asked me if I could help. Since I attend the church and it was apparent to me that no one else did, I stepped up. I asked the kids to all stop jumping, over and over again. Then the guy asked me if I would get all the kids off of the inflatable. After an embarrasing climb up on it, I asked everyone to take 10 steps back and asked all the kids to get off and form 2 lines as there was 2 rock climbing areas. Did they? No! They looked at me like I was an alien. It took me about 5 minutes to get all the kids off and into 2 lines. Then I proceeded to sit my butt down and block the entry. You can imagine the looks I was getting.
Before I could get the kids off, there were two bigger boys who just came and cut in line (this was part of the problem...cutters). I asked them nicely to get off and in line. Their mom decided that she didn't like that I asked her boys to back up and came over and told me so. After I had everyone settled and in line, she decided that she wanted to cause some trouble so she laid into me right there in front of all those people. "Just who put you in charge?" "Who do you think you are telling my kids and all these other kids what to do?" And, so on for about 10 minutes. I tried to tell her that the employees asked for my help and I was worried that some of the little kids were going to get hurt. Then, I tried to just ignore her, but then she asked the question I just couldn't help but answer...."Who do you think you are telling these kids what to do? Their parents should be watching them." My reply, "You mean like you were watching your kids?" See, her kids were the worst behaved ones! They were cutting, pushing and making the little kids fall over.
Then I remembered I was at church, my church and I needed to act like a christian. About this time, Shane walked up and started listening in. I looked at him and said "help me, please." Then, he proceeded to go back and forth with her for about 5 minutes. It wasn't until he said that he was sorry that she was inconvenienced that she shut up.
I don't take c*&p from people real well, and I was so proud of myself for the way I handled the situation. So, I ended up staying there and being the doorman for another hour or so while Shane and Jacob walked around having fun. I don't mind as it was a church volunteer event. Clearly they needed more help.
The fun didn't end there. Some parents got into it later on about whose kids were cutting, etc. I tried to stay in my own zone and stay out of it. Church event? You wouldn't think so. Man, it is really hard to show grace when people act like that.
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