Your Loss, My Gain

Sang's Mission, Part 2

Sang's POV:

It doesn't take long for registration to be over and the fun to begin. The kids were divided into several teams.  Each team was a mixture of boys and girls from 7-11 years old.  They would be earning points for their team for each of the activities.  It reminded me of Harry Potter, because any rule breaking could cost their team points. The teams came up with their names and mascots, and I looked up the different mascots to print off for the team signs.  The Shiny Superheroes was my favorite team name.  I found them a picture of Superman, Silver Surfer and a few other superheroes to use on their poster. Then, they used glitter to make the superheroes shiny.  Now I know why my teachers said that glitter was made by the devil himself.  It gets everywhere and doesn't come off. Ever. 

Each kid was allowed to bring a Nerf gun.  The child's name was written in Sharpie Marker on the gun, but the child was told that s/he would probably not get the same darts back.  Apparently, the Anderson team also bought extra guns and plenty of darts. These were for kids who didn't bring a gun with them.  The first stage was to make targets out of toilet paper tubes.  The kids decorated them and then took turns shooting them from different distances.  The hard part of this was running around collecting the darts and setting the tubes back up.  Once all of the kids had a chance to practice, the kids were given a choice of 2 guns and 6 darts.  They had 6 targets and got points for the number of targets that were knocked over. 

All of the kids got at least 1 target down.  Two actually knocked them all over.  One was a little boy who was probably one of the younger kids that we had in our group, named Hakim,  The other was an older girl named, Tamia.  When I went over to talk to Hakim, he looked at me and just babbled something and was very animated with his gestures.  Lilly glanced over at us and and came over.

"Hi, Kim!  You did a great job!" She said to him getting to his level and looking into his eyes. 

"Great job!" Kim said enthusiastically and then started babbling again. 

Lilly stood up and turned to me.  "Kim is autistic.  He has a lot of great skills, but communicating is one of his areas of weakness...as is attention," she adds as Kim runs across the room to get something.  "Just talk to and treat him like the others.  He may need more guidance than the others, but he will do well today.  He has been here before and always seems to have a fun time.  He has come a long way since I first met him." I just nod to her and watch Kim a little bit. He is running around and collecting all of the darts that have been shot. It is fun to watch. He rushes back over to me and holds out the darts.  I allow him to put them in the big bucket that we have full of darts.  This process is repeated until all of the darts are picked up.  He makes me tired just watching him.  

The next bit of time is spent setting up for the round robin style Nerf War.  Each game lasts 5 minutes and it is double elimination.  Lake and I have observation posts where we can see if a person is tagged.  Once someone is tagged, then she or he has to sit out for 30 seconds in the penalty box. Each tag is recorded and the top team gets the most points.  It is hard to keep track of all of the points and makes me want to have the laser tag vests that do it for you.

The Wondrous Wombats end of winning the game with the Shiny Superheroes coming in second.  While Kim may be a good shot, he doesn't understand about not getting shot or going to the penalty box.  This caused some kids to get upset, but they were calmed down when we reassured them that we were watching. 

The game took a little longer than expected, but it was well worth it.  All of the kids helped clean up the area and find the darts that seemed to be everywhere with Kim leading the way.  We even made it a game to see who could find the most darts and gave points out according to how many darts were found by each team.  The Karate Kids won that game because Kim was on the team and seemed to have a knack for finding the darts.