(Sample post: the people and events in this story are made up for display purposes.)
Our school asked us to do some community service hours this term. Honestly? At first I just wanted to tick the box. A friend said a local food pantry needed volunteers to pack hampers on Saturday afternoons, so we signed up together.
The warehouse was stacked with boxes: rice, pasta, tins, cereal, toothpaste. The coordinator split us into stations and announced the goal for the day: 200 hampers. I did the maths. Two hundred? In one afternoon? There were only about fifteen of us.
I got station one: folding boxes and taping the bottoms. My first five were wonky, and one gave way the second someone dropped a tin in. Tomatoes rolled everywhere. A grey-haired lady helped me chase them down and showed me the trick: “Pull the tape straight across, then press down both sides.” She’s been coming every Saturday for six years.
Slowly we found our rhythm. Someone put music on, and it turned out one song was exactly four hampers long. We started racing the next station, yelling every time we finished a row. A kid younger than me was on counting duty, and every fifty hampers the whole room cheered.
By the time the last box was sealed it was after five. My arms were jelly and I had bits of tape stuck all over my hoodie. The coordinator told us the hampers would go out to local families the following week. That’s when it hit me: every box I’d taped would be opened by a real person.
I’d finished my service hours ages ago, but I signed up twice more anyway. The lady with the tape trick knows my name now. If you’re thinking about volunteering, don’t overthink it. Start with one Saturday afternoon.