On Gumby and Pokey

Gumby had it going on. Aside from being green, made of clay, and having a pet horse named Pokey, he could “change into anything” according to his catchy theme song. If only flexibility were catching, too.

This morning when Sam asked to interview me for the promotional video she was making, my best extemporaneous piece of advice for new AmeriCorps recruits was to be flexible.

I took most of my self-control, however, to passively tell the camera I thought flexibility was important. I did not just want to say it, I wanted to expatiate on the necessity of being able to roll with the punches, of guarding yourself from turning a sense of disappoint into a sense of injury. Thinking Sam would not appreciate a coup d’état of her promotional video, I managed to restrain myself.

But I wanted to preach the virtues of flexibility, if only because it has been a hard lesson to learn. In the wake of the flood it became apparent that one of the many things altered was my job description as a VISTA summer associate. It hardly made sense to talk about neighborhood association meetings and block parties with the streets under water and residents displaced from their homes. So everything we were doing changed, and then changed again and again – by the week, the day, and even the hour.

That is how the summer VISTAs arrived at what would become the East Central Iowa Volunteer Reception Center in matching cherry red “Iowa Disaster” shirts and little more at first than 10 cell phones. Still wearing the same shirts (why is it that the only thing I am not suppose to change is my shirt?), now I am subjected to change not hourly, but by the minute. The Volunteer Reception Center is rank with it (maybe that is our shirts), but I am beginning to see change as a positive thing. The longer the Volunteer Reception Center is open, the clearer I see that by being able to change into anything, like Gumby, the greater the chance that we can be of assistance to someone. Whereas my coworkers seemed to have grasped that long ago, I have been slow to join the flexibility bandwagon. Just call me Pokey.

I have a dilemma

When I flipped open the chirping cell phone in my right hand and rattled off my standard greeting about the East Central Iowa Volunteer Reception Center, I was prepared to talk to someone calling with flood related needs or wanting to volunteer. What I was not prepared for was to be greeted by a cheerful male voice that drawled in a tone of something akin to familial acquaintance, “Katie, I have a dilemma.”

I do not know what startled me more – hearing the sound of my own name so quickly after I had introduced myself, the straightforwardness with which the man whose name was obscured by a static connection confessed his dilemma to me, or the thought that I could help solve other people’s dilemmas

I could help, not because I could claim superior knowledge, vast experience or a profound reservoir of wisdom from my 21 years of life, but because it was my summer job, albeit not as I had originally envisioned.

Before my college roommates and I finished up our junior year and dispersed across the country to return home (trying not to remember that Jenny was flying home to Hawaii), we had the routine conversations about what we all would be doing this summer. Emily would be interning in a veterinarian’s office in Louisiana, Jessie was going to study in Rome, Grace was going to be a canoe instructor in Connecticut, and I was coming home to be an AmeriCorps*VISTA (Volunteers in Service To America) summer associate, whatever that entailed.

Having heard AmeriCorps described as a domestic PeaceCorps, I knew that being an AmeriCorps*VISTA member meant I could be doing anything this summer. Whatever it was, all I wanted was at least semi-frequent showering, electricity, and an opportunity to do meaningful work for my hometown. After all, the summer before my senior year in college was probably the last time I would live in Cedar Rapids, I liked the AmeriCorps’ mission about alleviating poverty through passion, and I was not particularly interested in spending another summer waiting tables.

As I stood in a church basement, on a cell phone, listening to a friendly stranger tell me he had a dilemma that needed my help, it all seemed to flash before my eyes. I could help people this summer because it was my job; I could care enough to get a few good stories for my roommates and leave it all behind when I returned to school this fall. Or I could help people because, when I applied for AmeriCorps*VISTA on one fine antediluvian spring evening, I decided that this summer I wanted to live for someone other than myself. And at the moment that someone else had a dilemma.

Welcome to my summer.