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.