(no subject)
As described in an earlier posting, my square dancing group is now defunct or at least dormant. At the going-away party last month I had asked about dancing in the Santa Cruz Pride parade one more time, but was told that the application deadline had probably already passed.
However, soon afterward I checked and found out that the application deadline was still a few days away, so I posted a message to the group mailing list asking if anyone was up for one more special event. By the day of the application deadline I still didn't have enough "yes" replies (at least eight people are needed to dance), but I decided to go ahead and fax an application in anyway, with the idea that this bought us a few more weeks for everything to come together, whereas if it ended up that things were just not going to work out, I could always cancel.
And so I, the least social person in the world, somehow got to be in charge of trying to get it all organized without just annoying people. It is to laugh. But bit by bit it seemed to be OK. What we were finally stuck on was that we needed to come up with two "vehicle monitors" plus a general monitor, plus send them to a monitor-training session. No such luck.
Then on Friday I was at "Follywood Premiere Night" which was basically a big party for students and families to show short films they had made, perform in skits, present humorous awards to each other, and generally hang out in wild costumes eating snacks. I showed a film I had made, and my son Sam had worked on multiple films and also did a fair amount of presenting and speaking. Afterward, having recognized my name, a woman came up to us and said she was on the Pride committee and had sent me mail that afternoon (which I hadn't been home to see yet at that point) wanting the final info for our contingent, in particular the names and contact info for the monitors.
I told her about the problem we were having finding monitors, and she pointed to Sam. I said he was 15, and that all the material I'd seen said that monitors had to be at least 18. She said that he was more mature than most 18-year-olds, that it wasn't her rule, that it didn't matter, and that he could certainly pass for 18 (for one thing, he's 6'3"). She also said they really wanted to have us in the parade, and that they knew the monitor situation was a problem for many groups, and would somehow try to make it easier to deal with in the future. She also said she would waive the requirement for the general monitor as long as we had two vehicle monitors.
So I asked the other members (well, OK, *former* members) whether they thought we should take her advice or whether this just sounded like big trouble. One dancer who is also on the Pride committee replied that one of his children had been a monitor at 17, that no one would ask Sam's age at the monitor training, and that, yeah, they really wanted us in the parade. Other members then took the view "If people from the pride committee say we should do it, then let's do it."
So Sam went through monitor training today with no problem, and I guess we'll be dancing in the parade tomorrow after all.
However, soon afterward I checked and found out that the application deadline was still a few days away, so I posted a message to the group mailing list asking if anyone was up for one more special event. By the day of the application deadline I still didn't have enough "yes" replies (at least eight people are needed to dance), but I decided to go ahead and fax an application in anyway, with the idea that this bought us a few more weeks for everything to come together, whereas if it ended up that things were just not going to work out, I could always cancel.
And so I, the least social person in the world, somehow got to be in charge of trying to get it all organized without just annoying people. It is to laugh. But bit by bit it seemed to be OK. What we were finally stuck on was that we needed to come up with two "vehicle monitors" plus a general monitor, plus send them to a monitor-training session. No such luck.
Then on Friday I was at "Follywood Premiere Night" which was basically a big party for students and families to show short films they had made, perform in skits, present humorous awards to each other, and generally hang out in wild costumes eating snacks. I showed a film I had made, and my son Sam had worked on multiple films and also did a fair amount of presenting and speaking. Afterward, having recognized my name, a woman came up to us and said she was on the Pride committee and had sent me mail that afternoon (which I hadn't been home to see yet at that point) wanting the final info for our contingent, in particular the names and contact info for the monitors.
I told her about the problem we were having finding monitors, and she pointed to Sam. I said he was 15, and that all the material I'd seen said that monitors had to be at least 18. She said that he was more mature than most 18-year-olds, that it wasn't her rule, that it didn't matter, and that he could certainly pass for 18 (for one thing, he's 6'3"). She also said they really wanted to have us in the parade, and that they knew the monitor situation was a problem for many groups, and would somehow try to make it easier to deal with in the future. She also said she would waive the requirement for the general monitor as long as we had two vehicle monitors.
So I asked the other members (well, OK, *former* members) whether they thought we should take her advice or whether this just sounded like big trouble. One dancer who is also on the Pride committee replied that one of his children had been a monitor at 17, that no one would ask Sam's age at the monitor training, and that, yeah, they really wanted us in the parade. Other members then took the view "If people from the pride committee say we should do it, then let's do it."
So Sam went through monitor training today with no problem, and I guess we'll be dancing in the parade tomorrow after all.