Have I mentioned that I love Read to Me?
I rarely had free Tuesday nights in college, and even now, everyone seems to pick Tuesdays for meetings and ceremonies and such, but about every other week I'm able to make it up to the UMOM New Day Center in Phoenix for the weekly Read to Me program. And it always turns out to be not just a good way to Serve but also an all-around awesome way to spend a Tuesday night.
Tonight, for instance, I got to read with a kid named Brian — spelled the same way and everything. We were both rather impressed that we had the exact same name, and reading with him was a blast. I started out reading a book to him, and then he read one to me. And then, he asked if I had a pen and paper in my pocket; I think he wanted to write down the word "armadillo" to take home and remember.
Well, even though my car is stocked with notebooks and pens, I didn't bring any inside to Read to Me (I know, I know... Reporter fail.) and told Brian that all I had in my pockets were keys and such. He asked if he could see my keys, which I showed him, and then he took them and set them on the floor between us and said, "We'll get to these later."
Soon enough, we were playing a new game that Brian made up that involved picking different colors off of my key chain and finding them in the book we were reading under the pressure of a ticking clock. Brian seemed to especially enjoy kicking things off with "Thirty seconds on the clock! Go!" It was ridiculously adorable.
Honestly, I never quite got ahold of all the rules; they seemed to be rather fluid. But hey, that occasionally worked in my favor, like when I was surprised to learn that one win took my score from a –2 all the way up to 1 without bothering to stop by –1 and 0.
Also, as often happens with kids of all ages, I got a slew of random questions to answer over the course of the hour, ranging from "Where's the bathroom?" to "Do you have a son?" and "Do you have a car? Is it a limo? A truck?"
Brian also asked me, "Will you be here tomorrow?" Sadly, I had to tell him that I wouldn't be back until two weeks from tonight. (Duty calls next week in the form of a J-school awards ceremony.)
But if you're ever free from 6 to 7:45ish p.m. on a Tuesday, you should definitely go to Read to Me. If you're at ASU, you can get in touch with the Lusks, who usually meet at Tempe First UMC and carpool to UMOM. Otherwise, you can sign up online or just show up at UMOM (on Van Buren east of 32nd Street) by 6 p.m.