my day began yesterday in a much different way than most days. i woke up at 4:30am. 4:30am is early for most people, but 4:30 for me is a little on the extreme (pun fully intended) side in my opinion, but i figured this would be for a good cause. the cause? extreme makeover: home edition.

in the midst of the extreme makeover: home edition trek across all 50 states, they landed 20 minutes down the road from me. upon finding this out, i figured i could put in a lending hand. i have done habitat for humanity in the past and enjoyed it, so i figured this would be a good thing. the plan: meet at 6am for check-in, “the march” at 8am, demolition around 9am, etc. or so i thought. every step took significantly longer than planned. i also expected a lot of people to be there to lend a helping hand for anything that is needed. i was wrong about this as well.

as it turned out, about 70% of the people were women and about 70% of the women had one purpose, see ty. ty pennington of course is the star of the show and is one of these men that most women would love to meet. unfortunately, this meant that these women were not there to help out a needy family, but rather help out their lust for seeing the perfect man.

now, i will not make myself out to be a hypocrite and say i didn’t want a chance to see and possibly meet paige, but this was not my primary goal. the primary goal of the average person seems to center around themselves, whether it is to meet that one person, have a chance to be on television, be able to say they were a part of extreme makeover, or even the selfish desire to be able to say they “helped” build a house for a needy family. their need for any of this ranks higher than the desire to help a family that truly deserves it.

i had hopes for yesterday upon waking just to see them be ever so slightly disappointed. yes, the magic of the show disappears when you witness it in progress first hand, but it wasn’t really that. yes, the outgoing, fun nature, always friendly on television ty was very unapproachable (although i have no doubt how busy the man is, so to me it is justified), but that really wasn’t it. and yes, the self-centered average person is a little disappointing, but even this is expected. no, the thing that disappointed me was that i went out to this site to help. i am a relatively big guy, and i can help with any form of manual labor, but there was nothing for me to do.

ok, yesterday was devoted to heavy machinery, hauling in truck loads of dirt, and pouring the slab foundation. these are jobs that i fully understand are not for me as i specialize in none of them, but upon approaching some of the crew for the show, asking what i (a volunteer) can do, i was continually given a blank stare as if this had never been asked before.

from what i can gather, the building (the actual work to be done) is entirely done by the contractors and their people, which is fine, but the premise of the show tends to be a house built by this family’s community. i thought i was walking onto a site that i could help and build a home on, but i walked off feeling that all i had done was walk around and watch a house be destroyed.

it is truly a wonderful thing what abc and all these other companies do for these families, and i don’t want to take away from that one bit in what i am saying. i had simply hoped that my presence there would have be able to provide the help that i thought was needed. this was just to share my experiences on the site of a real live extreme makeover: home edition.

here’s to trying!