The Things I Do for You Kids!

One of the responsibilities our staff all share is donation duty -- about every four to five weeks, three of us are the main people in charge of taking in the items that people want to give to the hospital, distributing them among the patients, writing thank you notes and what have you. This week is my week. No, I do not want your old Barbies, board games with half the pieces missing, or stuffed animals. Yes, people bring that shit in all the time. No, we can't give it to patients if it's used. Yes, we throw it away and don't tell them.

We were notified last week that people from a correctional facility in the next county would be bringing us a large donations of pumpkins today. Apparently, pumpkin farming is the latest in rehabilitation programs, and these guys have been making donations to us for a few years now. I've been so enthralled with living in a state where there actually is an autumn again (complete with crisp air and trees changing colors!), that I didn't really think much about it. I'll be in a meeting, page me when they get here.

Since I had to extricate myself from said meeting, my two donation duty cohorts were already assisting the delivery guys when I arrived on the scene. At first glance, it was sort of cute. Two of the four guys were dressed up as a scarecrow and a lion, they had a little nylon pumpkin with candy in it that they were handing out along with the pumpkins to passersby, there was a big heavy duty wagon thing to transport the pumpkins from the haywagon (seriously, a haywagon!) into the lobby of the hospital... this was going to be well-orchestrated, and perhaps even a little fun. (Although, seriously, I would love to see the face of some parent who wasn't there as their barely verbal kid tries to explain that there was a lion in a truck at the hospital who gave him a pumpkin...) In the spirit of entertainment, I snapped a shot or two with my handy dandy cell phone.



And then it occurs to me... these are Prison Pumpkins... and these costumed guys are affiliated with the prison... how, exactly?? God bless my co-worker Katie, who had forgotten about the whole incarceration aspect of the situation, and started asking questions about how long they'd been doing this, did they own a farm, blah blah diddy blah. The scarecrow explained to her that the pumpkin patch was on-site at the correctional facility, the inmates plant the pumpkins each year by hand, and the donations they make are part of their community service. Whew. OK. Not inmates themselves, then. Just guys who work with them. Everybody has their own calling, I suppose.

During all of this, the lion and the scarecrow have been making good use of both a digital and a video camera. Scarecrow tells us it's good for the jailbirds hoods and thugs inmates to see the end result of their labor, and rather sneakily segues from there right into, "So, how about a picture of you girls..." Y'all know how I love to have my picture taken. But, it's for the greater good, so... OK.

At which point, Scarecrow hops down from the haywagon that he's been sitting in looking relatively normal (he IS in a scarecrow costume, after all!) this entire time, and someone must have invisibly sliced through him at the knees with a self-cauterizing light saber as he was doing so, because suddenly, dude is like, four-foot five, max. Katie and I look at each other in wonder of how, exactly, we lost control of this situation. She's shorter than I am by a good few inches, and I could tell his diminutive stature made her somewhat nervous as he moved to stand next to her. Imagine my delight in realizing that, as he then pulled me into the shot, the top of his head came just exactly to my chest. I'm about to be photographed with a scarecrow who has my right boob to his temple and his hand at the small of my back.



Funny, I don't remember "getting felt up by a midget scarecrow prison worker" being in my job description....