Clarke signs up for everything at church. In all honesty, its equally endearing and annoying. There is the sign up to clean the church. Annoying, but someone has to do it, right? So long as I'm not assigned toilet duty, I'm okay. Pushing around the behemoth vacuum cleaner counts as a workout, right?
There is a sign up for feeding the missionaries. Endearing.
With my little brother serving a mission, I hope that he encounters lots of amazing meals in the home of super cool members (like Clarke and me!). Of course there was that time Clarke signed up to feed the Spanish speaking missionaries. We don't speak Spanish. At all. Talk about awkward!
Then there is the sign up to work a shift at the cannery. Endearing until you've actually worked there and then annoying doesn't even begin to describe what waits for you behind those doors.
Today we worked at the cannery.
Its pear season at the cannery. I was relieved we would not be working with raw meat. Or vegetables. Pears are great, after all. I woke up this morning thinking I liked pears. Of course, when I wake up, I also like the thought of exercise. Until I roll out of bed.
We were ushered into the "plant" where the temperature was about 30 degrees below freezing and assigned to work wearing attractive hair nets and blue latex gloves. Duties were doled out on a first come basis and just as we were being ushered to the assembly line, the "duty doling" man pulled Clarke aside, undoubtedly impressed by Clarke's remarkable physique (hot....sizzle...), and rewarded Clarke with a special job. Not just any job doled to your average drone. He would be mastering the coring and peeling machine. Lucky.
I was a drone. Pointed to the assembly line and armed with a hand peeler. Oh goody.
Flanked on either side by elderly men, I set to work. Watching those peeled, cored, and chopped pears rumble from the machines and tumble out onto the conveyor belt in front of us. THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of pears. The pears were freezing cold! Maybe that's why the gloves are blue....so you wouldn't see your fingers turning a dead shade of pale during the process?
It was my job to watch each pear as it moved on by. If it had any seeds, I had to peel them out. If their was any remaining peel, I peeled it off. Exciting times.
The first hour was mind-numbing. And finger numbing. In my strained effort to be creative, I discovered a method of peeling that made each pear half look like a giant tooth. Char See, master fruit peeler.
The second hour was excruciating. I had no further feeling in my fingers. But they magically continued to peel those pears. Go fingers! And my frantic search for a wall clock proved fruitless in a room surrounded by fruit. Go figure.
The third hour was comatose. Somehow my mind continued to tick, though. First I ticked through this week's grocery list. Then next week's grocery list. I ticked through my imaginary travel itinerary...someplace warm where they don't grow pears. Then I mentally decorated for Halloween, fantasized about cake, daydreamed what it would be like be Mary Poppins, and finally gave up on "ticking" altogether. Ticking is way overrated when your imagination is competing with truckloads of pears.
The fourth hour. FINALLY. Just call me the energizer bunny. The frozen, hair net-wearing, and completely deaf version of the energizer bunny. Four hours of hearing those monsterous machines clanking and banging and crashing and smashing had rendered me hard of hearing. Four hours elbow deep in pear land had left me with frozen appendages. Four hours of complete, 100% monotony made me question whether or not I really liked pears much after all. Perhaps we should have done vegetables instead. No love lost there.
BUT...
In spite of my experience, here is why you should sign your name on that volunteer sheet that routinely floats its way around priesthood and relief society.
Because all the pears produced by the church are canned at the cannery in Garden City. That means, the tooth shaped pears I helped peel today, for four hours, will be packaged in cans and sent all over the world to help feed hungry children. A definite plus when I step back and consider that I have a child who eats on a regular basis, and several times in between each meal, at that.
And, well, thats the only good reason I could think of. But its a humdinger of a reason!
AND...
Here are a few handy dandy tips for your shift at the cannery.
#1 Wear jeans. Canning is a messy, sticky, and wet business!
#2 Wear sneakers! Again, canning is a messy, sticky and wet business!
#3 Memorize epic poems to recite back to yourself when your eyes begin to glaze over.
#4 Wear long sleeves for protection against freezing to death and stickiness.
#5 Your cannery shift is a bad hair day waiting to happen. Embrace that hair net!
#6 Wear ear plugs. You might be able to hear yourself think afterwards
(my ears are still ringing!)
#7 Memorize full symphonies to hum to yourself when you think you begin to fall asleep on the job.
#8 Wear a waterproof watch. There are no clocks! I looked.
#9 Try to get a cool job. Bribe if necessary. Conveyor belt drone is not the way to go.
#10 Make an appointment with your chiropracter for afterward. Your back will thank you.
