Big Brother and Big Sister

I have always been good with kids. Somehow I still believe that even though my younger cousins hide from me when I visit their house. In my adult life I have taken opportunities to volunteer with special events. Last year I participated in a long term (a whole school year) group mentoring program. There were 3 male and like 15 female mentor volunteers. Towards the end of the program I was asked to become a one-on-one mentor. When I read the website information it said that I had to have weekly contact with the kid. I though wow there are very few things I do every week, not even the things I find mildly enjoyable like grocery shopping.

This fall I decided to that I was getting bored finding women do date, reading books, playing sports, staying up late, traveling the world etc. So I figured I would give the whole one-on-one mentoring thing a try and do something good for an under privileged kid. At the United Way fair I got info about the Big Brothers and Big Sisters program. Later in the week I applied online. Eventually we setup a time to have some come to my home and interview me a month later. In that month I get calls from my references asking what I wanted them to put on the form about me. There are so few males that volunteer, and even less that volunteer for nurturing type activities (like mentoring). I figured as long as I did not eat the children I would be ok. So I told one person to put that I have a chainsaw hang up in my house. This is actually a true statement; there was one hanging in my garage. Every downtown resident needs to have a chainsaw, how else would you be able to go through your townhouse wall and visit your neighbor?

So the day of the interview comes and two women show up at my house. That is a surprise since they said one person was coming and I even got a name. Even though it was a surprise, it made sense it would be a female entering a strange man’s house. They told me they had done a background check on me to make sure that I was not a psycho. Then they handed me a stack of papers to fill out which for the most part duplicated the stuff I filled out online. The forms were asking for my permission to have a background check and reference check. That is when my fascination started, they were asking permission for things they had already done…
They continued to befuddle me the rest of the evening. While sitting inside my house they ask me to "Describe your home environment." I looked at them, then around my house, then at them again. I let about 30 seconds pass and the silence made it clear that they were serious about wanting an answer to the question. So I said “efficient”. They sat there for another 15 seconds waiting and finally figure out that I truly am efficient with my one word answer so she wrote that down. The whole interview went like that.