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Yet more dunk tank drama


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Posted by Pete on January 31, 2023 at 03:31:33

If you're following along with the story of my crazy neighbor and her traumatic history with a dunk tank, I have yet another short update. I'd honestly planned just to drop the whole thing. But the other day, I was taking advantage of the nicer weather to do some work on the wife's car in my driveway. I was focused on what I was working on, then was startled by a timid voice behind me, "Mr. Davison?" I don't expect anyone to call me "Mister," and when I turned around, it was the teenage son of my crazy Karen drama queen neighbor. Obviously I had my guard up - I don't have anything against the kid, but his mother his a complete nutjob and I wasn't sure if he was working on her behalf, out to destroy me. But he asks if he can talk to me for a minute, and I agree. We have a little table and chairs on our front porch, and I invite him to site, and my wife came out to join us.

The kid explains that he needs to do a service project for his high school requirements, and a friend of his had run a dunk tank last year, and he thought he'd try to do the same thing this year. I tried to change the subject a bit - my wife and I both work at the hospital, and I'm still a volunteer firefighter, and between the hospital and fire department there's always plenty of small projects that we give to kids who need to do service projects for scouts/school/whatever. I tried to suggest that route, since it would maybe take some of the heat off of me and the neighborhood drama with his mom. The kid thanked me for the ideas, but explained that his plan was more thoughtout than I thought - he wanted to work with a food pantry that was hurting thanks to the recent downturn in the economy, and he thought that instead of charging money at the dunk tank, he'd charge people for a donation of food, which he'd then give to the food pantry.

Having worked in healthcare for a while, I think I can usually read people pretty well, and my impression was that the kid was telling the truth, and wasn't looking to incite a bunch of melodrama. Unlike his mother, he was very polite, humble, well-spoken and I found I was actually enjoying talking with him. But I still was leery of the BS with his mother. So, I thought for a while, and decided to offer him the name and number of my buddy at the fire station who rents out the dunk tank, and I assured him that he wouldn't be charged to rent it. But, he'd have to go through that process himself, and he or his mom would have to sign all the paperwork, insurance info, waivers and all that. He nodded and took notes on his phone. He then asked about finding "victims" to take turns getting dunked. He said he wanted to ask some of the school teachers, coaches, cops and firemen. And figured that he and some of his friends would take turns to fill out the total time. I said that makes sense, and suggested that he just make sure he knew everyone that was going to get dunked, and maybe not just let random people volunteer in the moment. His face flashed for a second as if he understood what I was getting at, but then went right back to being calm and collected. We chatted about a few more things, then he shook my hand and my wife's hand, thanked us for our help, and walked back down the street.

When he left my wife and I looked at each other a bit perplexed. She shares my assessment that he doesn't seem to have much of his mother's personality or toxicity, but otherwise isn't too sure where this will go. I unfortunately can kind of be a sucker when it comes to helping people who ask for help, and I probably should have just politely declined to help the kid, but he did seem sincere, so... I don't know, we'll see what happens.




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