Riley is one of two hundred Olympic hopeful athletes across Canada who are sponsored by The Bay. In order to receive $5,000 each athlete must participate in a community service day in a HBC store. Today was Riley's day and his store was Nanaimo! A whole day with Riley and five hours of it in a shopping mall - can it get better than that?
The drive up was uneventful, lots of traffic, some decent conversation and some questionable music as of course Riley was in charge of the tunes. We were greeted by some nice people at The Bay and shown where Riley would sit, sign autographs and sell cupcakes! As it was Saturday of the July 1st long weekend and the weather was pretty good, the store was pretty quiet and early on Riley gave me the "how am I going to sit here for 5 hours look". Carol our host was very nice and was helpful in drawing people to the table to chat with Riley and get an autographed card. I hung around a bit and then took advantage of having to be in a mall and went shopping.
When I came back, Riley had been joined by two delightful little girls who were the store duty manager's daughters. They sure helped to pass the time as it was quite painful to sit and look interested as people passed by. Riley was soundly beaten in tic-tac-toe by the older one, much to her delight. As we were finally packing up to leave after a good number of autographs and $200 worth of cupcake sales, the duty manager told me what a personable and charming young man my son was - what a nice thing to hear!
Two hours later (with some much more questionable music purchased at the mall during our lunch break), we were back home again. A great day spent with Riley - not his first choice to spend a Saturday but he was a good sport and one I will remember for some time.
No comments:
Post a Comment