This past weekend I hosted a THON canning trip for 10 of my sorority sisters. We started off the weekend with a 3.5 hour drive to my home in New Jersey, complete with Scrabble, Cheez-Its and a fully charged iPod set to shuffle. We were setting off on a two-day trip that was nothing short of an adventure.
As all seasoned canners know, canning can be an extremely rewarding experience.
While we were standing at one of the busy intersections outside a mall near my house, we met so many amazing people. One woman told us that she was a three year cancer survivor, and just listening to her story and seeing that what we were doing makes so much of a difference to people like her, made it all worth it.
But, there wouldn’t be good without the bad. In light of recent events at PSU, we did have some people who were very adamant about not donating to us, simply because we were affiliated with Penn State, which was sad, but not exactly unexpected. We did have one passerby who donated, but felt the need to add, “I hope this isn’t going toward Sandusky’s lawyer fees,” as he drove away.
But, my personal favorite part of any canning weekend is seeing all the creative ways people come up with to donate while they’re driving by. We had a few people who simply threw money out the window as they drove by and others who held up traffic at a green light. There was even one girl, who couldn’t have been more than four or five years old, who shrieked when her mother reached out her hand to drop a dollar in my can, “I WANNA GIVE IT TO HER!” Like I said, canning is always an adventure.