Conditions: Packed day.
Everyone woke up at 7am. Great start to the day. I never thought 7am would be a prime wake up time. I remember struggling so much just to roll out of bed for my 9am psychology class. We woke up and went to a local school, both for kids with disabilities and without. There we put on a Kids on the Block puppet show. Now we've got the puppet show down so well that we can do a lot of it without the script. We even try to ad-lib sometimes. When we do the show that Kyle Marpe stars in, he has a sheet that has answers to pretty much every question a kid could ask. When we do the show that I star in, there's no such thing. I have to wing every question and it's always interesting to see how creative I can get. I hung out with a kid named LJ who was mesmerized when I beat him in the hand slap game. We had a fun time doing crossword puzzles together.
Afterwards we went to Independence First. They're pretty much who "provided" all of the clients for our friendship visits in Milwaukee. While we ate breakfast there, Jack, Derek, Kyle Marpe, and I came up with a million dollar idea. Well, it was mostly Jack's idea, but let's just say he would need our help to hatch the plan anyways since he has changed his major at least 7 times - no joke. We decided to create a bar that worked exactly like the stock exchange. Drink prices would be based on supply and demand. If one drink was in high demand, the price would go up, and other prices of drinks that weren't in high demand would go down. Every once in a while, maybe once per week, the market would "crash" and all drinks would be insanely cheap and/or free for a limited time. We were so psyched that we googled how we could make this happen. Unfortunately, all we found was that it had already been thought of.
Later on we started the sports extravaganza for the day. We began with wheelchair ice hockey. We couldn't figure out how to divide up the teams, so we just went over 21-ers vs. the minors. The minors were big time underdogs. The over 21-ers had more guys and a couple of hockey players. They even had one guy on their team who legitimately played wheelchair ice hockey. It was hilarious to see everyone sliding around on the ice and whiffing when they tried to hit the puck. No one could control their chair and move the puck at the same time. The chairs were still built pretty tough though, so plenty of guys were ramming each other into the boards and whatnot.
Let's just say if you want to win wheelchair ice hockey, pass the puck to me. I scored four goals and had three assists. The final score was 7-2. During the game, I started talking to Savannah, a girl with Down Syndrome. She loved to play but a lot of the guys were taking the game pretty seriously, so she wasn't getting the puck much. I decided to spread the word around to set up Savannah with a goal, and everyone was more than happy to do so. We lined her up in front of the goal and passed her the puck. She hit it and it just barely dribbled into the net but we all went nuts cheering for her. She instantly raised her stick in the air and loved it. It was pretty awesome to see.
Afterwards we went to a local high school to go play wheelchair basketball and beeper baseball. We played basketball for a while and got our butts absolutely HANDED to us by a guy that had recently won the national championship with the University of Alabama. Andi from the mall showed up to play and it was fun to see her again. After some basketball we went outside to player beeper baseball. It's baseball for blind people. We were provided masks that rendered our eyesight absolutely useless. The baseball is the size of a softball and has a beeper in it, and there are two pylons placed on first and third base. The ball is constantly beeping, so the batter can more or less tell when to swing. When the ball is hit, someone who can see flips a switch that triggers either first or third base to start beeping, depending on which base the ball went closest to. If the outfield can pick up the ball before the runner gets to base, the runner is out. If the runner gets to base before the outfield picks up the ball, his or her team scores a point. Eventually we grew tired of the game and decided to play different variations of the game...huge variations. We tried having everyone put on masks and then throwing the ball as far as we could to see who could run to the ball and find it first to pick it up. That turned into everyone gathering in a tight blob and throwing the ball straight up in the air and seeing how long we would stay in the circle before running away. Then, that turned into ditching the ball and just wrestling with the blinders on. Watching without a mask was hilarious.
Everyone was absolutely worn out at the end of the day, but Milwaukee has been absolutely memorable. We loved every second of it.
Savannah and I after the game ^^
No comments:
Post a Comment