Bucket List

Well, it took a few weeks before the Ice Bucket Challenge found me.  I saw it on Facebook, watched my nephews drenching themselves, and finally felt it cornering me from all sides.  Friends, acquaintances, church members, former work colleagues... I knew it would happen sooner or later.

It did.  

My day care family nominated us (Graham specifically) to take the challenge, and Graham being Graham was game for it.  It took Cael some serious negotiating, an extra cookie and $1 to get him to agree, but when the time came he backed out after looking up at the bucket over our heads.

Graham stood by my side, however, and when the water fell he got a minor splash on his shorts but was otherwise unaffected.  90% of the water landed in my lap and 10% on my head, and although Joel thought I should try again to make sure I was sufficiently head-drenched, my camera crew was gone and it was raining outside, so this will have to do.



I learned a few things from this experience.

1) Despite not having "man parts", ice water dumped in one's lap is still cold.  Very, very, numbingly cold.

2) Waiting for the water to fall is akin to waiting for your parents to receive a report card that you know has a lot of bad grades on it.  Minus the weird faces, I suppose.

3)  Graham will do anything for a dollar (including but not limited to: trying guacamole, scrubbing the toilet, eating wasabi, and being doused with ice water.

4) People care more about helping others than I would have guessed.  All of the "dumpees" out there could simply say they'd make a donation and not, but the ALS webpage shows that donations have reached $88.5 million so far from ice bucket challenges alone.  So that's why I made sure to do the same, and placed my donation this morning after a lengthy conversation with the boys about why the money wasn't supposed to go to me for allowing water to be dumped over my head.

So now that I am dry, I'm nominating my sister's family as well as my friend Alissa.  Here's hoping they'll still be speaking to me come tomorrow.

Happy #Icebucketchallenge!