So I know Sherry usually does the spotlights on people, but I thought I’d try my hand at one. Please excuse my amateur spotlighting, I’m still in training.

The other Tuesday brought a fun surprise when Jack, a volunteer who’s been helping us out 3 days a week for a few months now, brought his girlfriend for us to meet. I’ll point out two significant things to note. The first is that he was brave enough to bring his girlfriend to meet all of us. The second is that Jack has been laboring for 12 hours a week with us, unpaid, for several months, and his girlfriend who worked for 4 hours gets a spotlight first.

Turns out that Jack’s girlfriend, Carliegh, was a member of the Bouncing Bulldogs jump rope team. They are a super cool jump rope team with members ages 5 to 25, based in Durham and Chapel Hill. They’ve been national jump rope champions for 6 years in a row. If Kristen hadn’t been in the room, we would have merely commented about how cool that sounded. Luckily, Kristen was in the room. She’d seen them perform several times and really likes them, so she made–I mean asked–Carly if she would give us a jump rope demonstration. Because we were unprepared for a jump rope emergency (obviously an oversight to our usual severe weather, fire, injury, power outage, and animal escape emergency trainings), there was no jump rope to be found. Luckily Carly was a pro, and luckily we have lots of extension cords, and luckily I keep a camera in my pocket. Check it:

As impressive as that was using an extension cord and wearing cowboy boots, it was even more impressive that she came back the next week with a change of shoes and an actual jump rope to give us a proper demonstration. Note my obviously impressed noises, and Kristen’s enthusiasm: