I never thought I would join the army, but on Christmas Day, I decided to enlist. It has always been a passion of mine to serve others through hard work and volunteerism, just like millions of American men before me.

Thankfully though, the army with which I decided to enlist is not currently deployed to Iraq. Instead, I decided to suit up and become a part of The Salvation Army… if only for a day.

 

 

Most people don’t realize that The Salvation Army is actually a religious organization with strict doctrine. So strict that you can not marry outside of the Army if you are an officer, even if your spouse dies. Imagine if the US Army didn’t allow you to marry outside of the Army… forget “Don’t ask, don’t tell”… we’re talking full-fledged legalization of gay marriage. But I digress…

My brother, father, and I decided to partake in some volunteerism on Christmas morning/day rather than sitting around my father’s dining room table, eating cereal in our boxer shorts and watching cartoons. We were hoping that our experience at The Salvation Army in Wichita would far exceed that sort of fun. So rather than that sort of excitement, we woke up early on Christmas morning and headed over  to The Army’s west Wichita headquarters, suited up in Salvation Army aprons, threw on some disposable latex gloves, and joined the other early morning enlistees.

 

In any good army, there is a slightly psychotic drill sergeant to whip the enlistees into shape and turn them into model soldiers. Our drill sergeant was “Debbie”, a 40-something woman dressed in jeans that were too tight, a blue Hawaiian shirt, and sporting a set of black sunglasses that were perched on her dirty blond hair.  She was whipping soldiers into shape when we arrived at 9:30AM; she was also definitely “on” a cocktail of some psychotropic medication and caffeine, despite the early hour.

 

 

When we first arrived, tables still needed to be set, bread put into baskets, cranberry sauce removed from the hermetically sealed containers and sloshed into a giant serving bowl, and individual serving size butters put into bowls on the tables.

There were around 30 other volunteers when we arrived. It was seemingly a mix of social outcasts, families torturing their teenage children with volunteer service, old couples whose extended family did not want to spend Christmas with them, and us. We quickly went to work completing the tasks assigned by Debbie as she stormed around the spacious dining room wide-eyed and highly caffeinated.

She would occasionally flip her sunglasses down from her hair to her face while responding to a question with “You don’t wanna ask me that… you really don’t!”

 

 

In the kitchen, there were four guys preparing the feast; I later learned that they had been there since 4AM. Huge tubs of mashed potatoes, green beans, and stuffing were percolating on the executive-size stoves. Turkey slices were warming in aluminum cookware while the sweet potatoes were being prepared on a side table. It was only 10AM, but my stomach was craving a monstrous heaping of Christmas dinner.

By 10:15, the dining room preparation had been completed, my father was exhausted from scooping out bowls of cranberry sauce, and Debbie had finished two 20 ounce bottles of Diet Coke. More volunteers had arrived and were making small talk while awaiting the people who would be coming to our locale for a great Christmas dinner.

I chatted up one of the kitchen volunteers while he was taking a break and he relayed to me some of the more important and tedious jobs that would need to be completed. While standing in the window between the dining room and kitchen, he told me that he would need a few guys to be at the window at all times to be ready to dispense the clean dishes as they came out of the wash. I decided this would be the perfect job for my dad, brother, and I.

 

 

I called them over and we marked our territory by simply ordering around the other volunteers who approached the window with naive curiosity. As described by my new kitchen friend, our job would entail unloading the clean dishes and silverware from the dish rack in lightning quick fashion, transporting them to their appropriate place in the dining room, and walking the dish rack ten feet over to the poor schlubs who were scrapping the dirty plates of any remaining food particles.

In my mind, it was a job suitable to one person, two at the most, but I figured we had come as a family entity and should just stick together (otherwise, my dad was likely to disappear and leave my brother and I volunteering to our hearts content). I quickly decided to refer to our positions at the kitchen window as a “union job”: one man to do the work, a second man to supervise the first man’s work, and a third man to go on break.

 

 

The dinner was scheduled to begin at 11AM, and as the hour neared, Debbie called everyone’s attention to the front of the dining room through the use of a microphone. She introduced a short, balding man with grey-fogged glasses and white hair crazily out of place where it remained on his head.

 

 

He introduced himself as a member of The Salvation Army and the man in charge of the day’s event. He quickly launched into a quick description of the impending event that went something like this:

“We really appreciate you all coming today. Without you volunteers we wouldn’t be able to serve these people. Remember, these are people too. They are just like you and me, they are people too. They might look a little different, but they are people. Please do not touch them. Many of them do not like that. They might be confused when you touch them. But you can talk to them. And bring them food. Be nice to them, we should show them love, because some of these people have nothing. If we do that, they will appreciate it.”

 

 

I quickly glanced over to my brother and asked, “Who the hell are we serving? Convicts?” It wasn’t until that time that I had really considered who would be attending this event, but I had originally assumed that it would be individuals from group homes, potentially homeless individuals, and families who could not afford a nice meal on this blessed day. From the description provided by Salvation Sal, I was half expecting them to wheel in cages that contained half man, half werewolf hybrids who would be frothing at the mouth. Either that or convicts wearing ankle bracelets.

 

 

When Salvation Sal completed his stirring speech, Debbie piped in and explained what the ever increasing multitude of volunteers should be doing from 11AM to 1PM while dinner was being served. Luckily, I had already secured our union job at the kitchen window and I tuned out her crazy-eyed instructions.

When she finished instructing the other volunteers, she strolled by our position and stopped to look at the three of us. She asked, “What are you gentlemen doing today? You just gonna stand there and look pretty?” My dad quickly piped in, “Yes ma’am, we found ourselves a union gig, and we’re just gonna stand here.”

 

Apparently, my father had decided to get into the Christmas spirit and feed into Debbie’s now completely evident psychosis. She gave us a crazy smile and flipped her sunglasses down to cover her eyes as she walked away. She returned moments later with a large glass bowl full of ice and four cans of Diet Coke. She looked at the three of us through her sunglasses and said, “Guard these with your life.”

 

 

When the guests arrived, it was clear that Salvation Sal must have been scarred by some past Christmas Day fiasco. The individuals were just as I had expected, not the newly released were-beasts that his description had made me envision.

Other volunteers took the guests’ orders, brought them food, talked to them and made them feel welcome, and cleaned their placemats when they were finished. This cycle of life continued for the next two hours as even more volunteers arrived, seemingly only to make an appearance after having played a rousing round of Wii tennis on their newly acquired gaming system.

 

 

These stragglers mostly stayed off to the side and watched the other volunteers do their thing. Our union job provided some action every 5 minutes or so as clean dishes would be brought to the window and we would unload it contents in under 5 seconds and then hand the dish-rack to a guy who was dressed like he might be the lead singer of Wichita’s newest 30-something boy band.

 

 

During the lull between freshly cleaned cutlery and dishware, the three of us kept ourselves entertained with jokes about union jobs.  We were eventually joined by a young boy, approximately 10 years old, whom I nicknamed Huck Finn and who must have determined we were the coolest group in the entire room. He tried to be a fast learner, but repeatedly burned himself with the piping hot silverware because he grabbed them right out of the rack, instead of emptying them into the silverware bin. Of course, in line with our sophomoric humor of the day, we kindly made fun of him for it.

 

 

As 1:30 neared, we each took turns grabbing a plate of food and satisfying the hunger pangs that had been emanating from our bellies for the last several hours. Thankfully, it tasted even better than I had imagined. Over the course of the four hours we volunteered that day, my father, brother, and I shared many laughs, performed a serviceable duty to one of our nation’s finest armies, and made fun of a pre-teen who thought we were cool.

In the end, it was as fulfilling as I had imagined, but the added bonus of interacting with Salvation Sal, Debbie, and Huck Finn made it a Christmas adventure that I will not soon forget. I might even consider enlisting again next year.