Let me take you back to a bright and sunny Saturday many years ago—a day when my brother Steve and I embarked on the Unforgettable Penny Scramble Family Photo Shoot Adventure, at a community festival held on the grassy grounds around El Centro De La Raza in Seattle.
Do not think we had some grand plan, oh no ... this idea came together like a mystery meatloaf. I *think* I heard about the event through a community bulletin, mentioned it to Steve during a family gathering, and somehow, in the spirit of "why not," we decided it would be fun to lend a hand. The festival needed volunteers, and Steve had his trusty camera, a portable printer, and his love for capturing memories. "Perfect," he said, "I'll take family photos and print them on the spot to give away!"
As for me? I remembered with joy the classic penny scramble. When I was a kid, parents would throw down a tarp in a barn, cover it with hay, sprinkle in some pennies, and let us kids dive in to find treasure. It was a guaranteed good time, both for us treasure seekers and for parents who could hang out together watching their kids. Then Steve and I Had A Brilliant Idea: Why pay for hay when we can get unlimited office-grade shredded paper from Steve’s workplace? We'll just bag it later and leave it in the recycling bin, no muss, no fuss. Brilliant!!!!!
The festival was on the sunniest day all year in Seattle, which, contrary to legend, can have beautiful sunny days (just not too many of them). We inflated a rubber life raft, filled it with the shredded paper and mixed in a baggy of pennies, some nickels, and a few shiny dimes to keep things interesting.
 |
| photo by Steve |
Kids dove in and had a blast scrambling for their loot, splashing through the mess to find treasure. Parents watched, amused, and added their spare change. Every now and then, I'd toss in more shreds to make up for what the children tracked away.
Meanwhile, Steve set up his photo station and was constantly busy snapping and printing pictures for all comers. There were one or two dozen other booths giving out snacks, drinks, information about local resources and health care, balloons, whistles, doodads, gewgaws, and all the farfenagle of a community festival. It was a picture-perfect day.
Until.
The sun began to set - it's clean up time! Steve packed up his gear, and I started to bag the shredded paper. That’s when I began to appreciate the difference between hay and paper.
If a little hay splashes into a grass lawn, you can pick up the big clumps, and any residue just sort of fades among the leaves of grass. In contrast, intense bright white printer paper stands out as the untidy litter that it was. Any single shred shone against the grass like a careless bit of litter instead of a well-intentioned donation - and there were hundreds of shreds, a day's worth of the stuff scattered around the lawn. It felt like that fairy tale about catching every feather dumped from a pillow: we can't do it, we can only try until everyone else has gone home, and then quietly fade away ourselves.
In truth, I don't think anyone but our own feelings of guilt actually held the situation against us, we got mailed a nice "thank you" card, and the day remains a happy memory. Somewhere out there, I hope there are families who still have those photos, and kids—now adults—who smile when they think of that sunny Saturday. And I walked away with a few lessons:
- Say yes to volunteering. You never know what memories you’ll create and fun you'll have.
- Kids like authorized chaos. So often we lead lives of constraints, rule, bossy people telling us what to do, financial or health limitations ... when the universe gives us an opportunity to just go crazy searching for treasure and flinging things in the air ... we do. This does not apply only to the young ;-)
- And most important: if you ever plan a penny scramble... for the love of all things holy, use hay NOT SHREDDED PAPER!
