Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Yo! Yo-Yo Guy.

The week before C's last day of second grade, her P.E. Teacher (yep, singular) hosts a school wide physical achievement field day of sorts called, "Super Kids Day."

As before, kids from Kindergarten to 4th grade are paired up and sent out onto campus to compete in a number of competitively challenging events of the physical nature.

The event relies squarely on the support and participation of what seems like a zillion or so parent volunteers, who must show up at the crack of dawn, collect their assignments and head out into the unknown vastness of the elementary school to find their Super Kid Day station for their 2-hour shift.

The last two years I've been around, I drew free-throw basketball and 200-yard dash.

This year, due to what I believe was a rare ability to demonstrate a modicum of proficiency at the particular Kid Station I was assigned to supervise, I manned the American Yo-Yo station.

Surprised? The deuce you say. Any ex-Tech Support Call Center Agent worth his/or her salt is more than a little practiced at the skills of the up-and-down-twisted-stringed orb.

What, you thought when you called in to have a tech support agent help fix your computer over the phone that he/she was actually sitting at a computer screen, reading incredibly detailed walk-throughs and interactive web-based guides on how to delete your Registry keys, or reset your Preferences?

Harv, mop bucket clean-up on aisle 9.

Most of the basic fixes were tattooed into our frontal lobes from week one of training, and the rest, well, the rest of our complicated twelve-step fixes were usually need or experience based guesses.

Guesses, btw, all made and passed onto the delicate creatures known as "our customers" while we TS Agents whiled away the hours, bouncing yo-yos, playing with our Silly Putty, or doing the prairie dog peep-up among the half-height cube farm walls.

Back on point, when it came time to find a parent to staff the American Yo-Yo station this year, I was apparently the only ex-TS Call Center Agent to step forward, grasp the invitingly familiar twin donut shaped orbs into my hands, and prove my worthiness with a quick series of flip-downs, walk-the-dogs, rock-the-cradles, and round-the-worlds.

My entire yo-yo repetoire. But it was enough to get the gig.

And I have to say, after an entire morning of coaxing, coaching, demonstrating, and goading elementary school kids in the art and noise of head-to-head American Yo-Yo competition, there wasn't a single Tech Support Call Center Agent veteran on the elementary call center floor.

But there were a few hopefuls...at least in the yo-yoing skills category My 8-year old daughter being one of them.

But why they even had a yo-yo category for Super Kids Day this year, and how my daughter has quickly become a better yo-yo-ist than yours truly, is yet another future YASTM blog entry.

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