I want to thank the three people who called me out to do the
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge (Gayle, Tara, and Kristin). I am honored to have been challenged three
times in 24 hours -- I've never been so popular!
You all know that I'm one to help out a cause. I've done one 5k to raise money for a
memorial scholarship, two 5k mud runs to help raise money for both breast
cancer awareness and to battle childhood cancers, and I've done these 5k races
in the last 12 weeks (or so). I'm
scheduled to sign up for one more (just making sure my Achilles tendon is
merely swollen and not about to snap on me since it affects my driving foot).
But … you'll have to hold your ice horses a little bit
longer, hopefully just until the end of today.
I figure I received Kristin's challenge at 11:00 p.m. Saturday night, so
that gives me a new 24-hour deadline. I
promise you, I'm working out the plan already and am working on a camera
person. If not, well … then you get what
you get with my own horrid handiwork.
You guys know I'm the one BEHIND the camera, not in FRONT of it.
I'm not afraid to do this.
Ask the gang I was with in Boston the other day. They saw what happened to me when menopause
kicks in: I get hot flashes that could fry and egg. I was stealing ice cubes out of my empty gin
and tonic glass and melting those suckers on my arms and neck (and down the
front and back of my shirt) right there in the restaurant's front window. Those Comic-Con costumes were not nearly as
strange as my "Oh my God, I'm sweating to death" hot flash
performance. I'm not afraid of ice -- I
can't live without it. I'm like that
zombie guy from Rod Serling's Night
Gallery when the electricity failed and he ran out of air conditioning, so
he sat in a tub full of ice.
Unfortunately, when the ice melted and the temperature rose, he kind of
decomposed.
As my trivia team famously claims, "Gimme a
minute." In this case, grant me a
slight extension. I may not be chicken
to do this challenge, but I'd rather not do it twice if I miss a camera angle.
Here's my one thought, though. With all this "calling out" on
Facebook, and even though it's all for a good cause and all in good faith, how
long do you think it's going to be until we hear the whiners? Oh, you know the whiners. There are two kinds of whiners:
Whiner #1 = "Hey, no one is calling me out to do the
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Why does
everyone hate me? I'd better call the
ACLU and get myself a lawyer. I'm gonna
sue ALS for discriminating against me because I'm a friendless, socially
malevolent turd."
Whiner #2 = "Hey, everyone is calling me out to do the
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, and I don't want to do it. You can't make me donate money! You can't make me pour ice on my head! You can't call me a loser because I won't do
it! You're BULLYING me. There's a law against cyber BULLYING, and
it's the new fad to pretend one is being BULLIED, so I'm going to sue your
sorry ass!"
As for my personal take on the whole thing -- I think it's a
great way to raise awareness (and money) for a good cause, but let's hope no one resorts
to shaming people who cannot, will not, or do not participate. The whole thing is starting to raise my
hackles because you all know some a-hole will claim it crosses over from fun
social media and turns into witch-hunt
public shaming. There's one in every crowd, but so far NONE in MY crowd. (Well done, people!)
With any lucky stars at all, this whole plan for getting my
challenge on film won't go to celluloid-hell-in-a-hand-basket. All I need now is a camera person (or a
really strategic placement of the camera itself), a bucket full of ice water,
and a majorly disruptive hot flash, and I'll be in business.
