So you might be wondering

What it was exactly that I had to complain about in the first place?

Relay for Life.

The American Cancer Society is an excellent institution, and the Relay for Life is actually a really great idea - if you don't know, the concept is that you get a team together and you walk for basically a day straight around a track (relay fashion of course) and you receive donations for said walking that you then pass on to the ACS to fund Cancer research, and education about early detection, and all sorts of wonderful things. And then you turn it into a huge event - dozens of teams, all with at least one person walking at all times, all doing their own little fundraising from under each little tent all the way around the track, cheering each other on, all through the night and into the next morning - 22 straight hours of walking to raise money for cancer research.

Right up until I arrived, this was a really cool idea. But then consider - I am counting on high schoolers here. We had around...40 kids signed up? And they weren't all there at once, but throughout the day. Well early on we had no problem getting people to walk, and help out with our fundraiser (giving out coffee in return for donations - GENIUS!), and etc. But it soon became apparent that they were just treating it like any other sleepover party, and as soon as they got bored, they started leaving. By the time 7 am the next morning rolled around, we were down to three people. Three people who had to break camp and pack everything up. Three out of forty. Two of which were the sponsors - myself and another teacher - and one of which was the student team leader who was in charge of the whole thing. And who had definitely developed a 'poor me' complex over the whole thing. Although she partially deserved to feel victimized, she mostly brought it on herself.

That was the issue I had with the students we had involved. But I also actually have an issue with the event itself. Or at least with the people who ran it. Farbeit from me to criticize an organization so heavily involved in solving one of this planets most serious problems, so I am going to assume it was an individual case, and that other iterations of this event are not so creepy, lame, and poorly organized.

The whole thing just got to be very ritualized and almost cult-like as we watched slide shows with pictures of the faces of people who had died from cancer, and lit luminaries all around the track containing names of loved ones who had "passed", along with those who were still battling. The whole slide show was projected on the wall of a tent, and they took the first half of the time trying to adjust the projector, meaning that some of the faces were distorted or out of sight - I'm glad none of my loved ones were "remembered" with this farcical ceremony. It echoed in my mind with overtones of scenes from "The Interpreter" (which I had watched the night before) where Nicole Kidman's character talks about not naming the dead so that we can move on from them, and then by the end of the movie reads a list of dead in a somewhat touching voice-over.

They had bands play all throughout the time, some of which were quite good, some of which were high schoolers who need to turn down their guitars. Now I am not railing against loud heavy metal here - I love loud heavy metal. Our school yearbook will feature pictures of yours truly, "chaperoning" a student concert by headbanging and throwing up the horns while practically face to face with the lead screamer. And honestly the band that I am talking about at Relay for Life was pretty good - it's just that the guitar was too loud as compared to the rest of their instruments, and really made it impossible to hear the balance of the song. Immature. I'm glad you are covering Black Sabbath, but Black Sabbath knew what they were doing, and what they were doing was not playing guitar as loudly as possible. But they will grow up. One band had a lead singer whose voice was going and she asked for "a thermos of something hot" - so I provided her with coffee, becoming an unintended super-groupie for a band I've never heard of. They covered Rush's "Spirit of Radio" for their last song - I almost offered to sing it for her! And they did an impressively good job with it, too.

The other issue was that the next morning, they took entirely too long dragging out the wrap-up of the whole thing. We really could've ended at 2 - the ceremonial stuff had taken place, the games had been played, the prizes had been awarded, the money had been donated, everything between 2 and 7 was an excercise in self-torturing commitment to the idea that we had to keep walking all night and really be loyal to 'the cause'. Well when 7 came around and they kept pushing off the start of the "closing ceremonies" we quit waiting around and took off. Next year the club that I sponsor will participate by showing up and donating money to some other group, not by committing to stick around all night. High schoolers won't do that, and neither will I.

Perspective on how loyalty-inspiring this Relay for Life wasn't:
We had a student lose his mother to cancer this school year. He couldn't be bothered to stay at the event for more than an hour and a half.

Good Day.