“Strut Your Stuff” is the name a friend and I came up with three years ago when we started planning a fundraising event for our local Boys & Girls Club. We chose the title because the band that was to play for the event is called the Roosters. I think of roosters as cocky male featherlings struttin’ their stuff around the barnyard for the ditsy hens. It turned into a theme pretty easy to work with: haybales, bib overalls, etc.
I was assigned, by default, the job of collecting items for the silent auction, a big part of the event. I have never really been in the role of asking donations for anything, so this felt really intimidating for me. But I plunged in that first year knowing it had to be done and it might as well be done by me. It was amazing. I actually liked walking into stores and speaking to merchants about this new program for kids that had just come to town. With few exceptions, merchants were eager to help and we accumulated lots of stuff to put out on tables for auction.
The project turned out to be huge, consuming pretty much all of my free time for about three months. Second year, things went a little better. This year I found a helper to visit the businesses and Bernie has really stepped up to the plate to help.
Strut Your Stuff will be this Friday night. Our house is packed with stuff that will have to be transported to the town ballroom on Thursday. Volunteers will come to help us set up for the dinner and the auction. More volunteers will come on Friday night to will help us conduct the auction and dinner and then re-set up for the dance that follows. It will be a big night. My feet will hurt.
What I look forward to is the day after, when I can straigten up my house, throw out all the little pieces of paper reminding us to do this or that, pack up the money boxes and poster paper and tape and put these in storage for next year’s event. We will also take time to figure out how much money was made for the club. No matter how grumpy we might have gotten during the process, making money to keep the club in operation makes it all worthwhile.