Bags for Books

 

Yesterday I had a workout without ever going near the Y.

          I’d signed up to help at the clothing drive for our town’s Friends of the Library group. Their numbers have been dwindling and I saw their request for help in the town’s newsletter and thought, ‘Why not?’

          The categories on the sign up list were – Greeter, Helper, Loader, Driver, Unloader. I originally signed up for Loader, but after remembering my age and the fact that each slot was for two hours, figured I’d better go to the safer job of Driver.

In reality, Greeter turned into Helper/Loader and Driver became Unloader.

But there were steps beforehand:

A car would pull up to us outside the library.

We’d cart the offerings to a waiting car trunk, often re-packing them into the big black bags required by the donation site.

After heaving them around so as many as possible fit into the driver’s car, the driver would go to the designated garage and unload them there.

I’m glad I was there to help. While we did have one tall and able gentleman, the other volunteers were a woman of 80, another with a black compression wrap around her hand, and a diffident teen who was there for community service hours but whose help was erratic.

And instead for putting in my two hours, I kept going – lift, load, pack, drive, unload -  for almost double that.

The good news is that all that golf and those exercise classes paid off – my back muscles are okay today. And it was actually a very pleasant time.