Now that I am [technically] an adult, I am discovering the subtle anxiety that afflicts a substantial amount of members at churches across the nation around this time of the year.

They will be approached. They may be wheedled, and/or cajoled. (I believe I have even heard of prospective volunteers being bribed at several churches.)

In short, they will be asked to help with Vacation Bible School.

So it was of little surprise that as the coordinators of said function scanned the open tundra of the church sanctuary that fateful Sunday, they singled me out as potential prey. Watch any random nature show and you are likely to see the essential mechanics involved with a predator capturing one’s dinner when there are no branches of Kroger’s for several hundred miles and one has no opposable thumbs. The procedure is not that different when VBS coordinators set about to find volunteers.

Now, this is not to say that VBS coordinators are cold-blooded and heartless – very far from it, about as far as you can get. They are simply desperate. Usually, they are soccer moms who volunteered to head up the affair because they felt that last year’s VBS could be improved upon. (This, by the way, is a continual cycle until the church’s reserve of soccer moms is exhausted, then I’m not really sure who they get next.)

There are some church members, naturally, more than happy to oblige when faced with the pleading, sleepless eyes unique to VBS executive planners across the nation. They love children and recognize them as the future of our world. These energetic and spirited people have little or no problem wiping a snotty nose, holding a saliva-ridden hand, or even being confined to the same restroom stall as their young protégés.

I am not one of these people, although I am still a kid at heart who watches “Spongebob Squarepants,” picks dandelions, eats Froot Loops for breakfast on occasion and still deems it hilarious when someone else farts in my presence. However, my sense of hygiene strictly forbids me to partake in such rituals as outlined in the previous paragraph.

Nevertheless, when this year’s VBS coordinator came around with her big, brown clipboard and the pen that never works, so they must borrow yours, I actually acquiesced.

I was told that they would prefer that I work in the music room. I like to sing, so this was fine.

Monday went alright. A thirteen-year-old from the youth group had been scheduled to work with me but as it turned out, there were more pressing matters for her to attend to, such as aimlessly wandering the church in boredom. Instead, I found out I would be teaching the class with an older woman (thirty) who was more accustomed to children than I, and I was more than willing to allow her to lead.

It also made it rather easy for the kids to remember our names, as she too was named “Amy.”

There were three groups, or “shifts,” of children each night, and each group had one or two group leaders that stayed with the kids from the beginning to the end of the evening. Each of the shifts contained your standard roles – the loud one, the quiet one, the obedient one, the rebellious one, the bully, the tattle-tale – and if there were not enough children to fill these roles, the kids had an unwritten way of assigning multiple roles for each child, which made for intriguing combinations.

I will outline just a few of these enterprising youngsters – and no, I don’t mean in chalk.

This first group contained an impish little girl with dark brown hair and eyes that looked like almonds. We had never seen her around my church, but by the end of the week we would know her name.

Never have I, or hope to, meet a child with such opposition to singing. As you can guess, she made Amy and mine’s position in the music class a rather interesting experience. By the end of the week, we had given up on her and just let her roll around on the floor the entire time, somewhat like a dog with a parasitic condition.

Lesson Learned: If you let one child act like a dog with a parasitic condition, all the children will want to.

Another asset of the first shift was a slightly freckled girl who always came looking incredibly fashionable for a four-year-old. She always came with a stuffed animal, the unfortunate creature finding itself in the small hands of every child in the room by the time the music session was over, much to the chagrin of this chic, miniature version of Kate Moss.

The second shift contained a little boy that I had become fond of by the end of the week, but whom had a habit of picking his nose right before the song where we all held hands. Naturally, as children can smell a germophobe a mile away, he was always beside me at this particular point during the class.

This group also contained a precocious youngster who seemed to have no bones in her otherwise healthy-looking little frame. I say this because she would droop onto the floor for the entire period unless one of us held her up. She would have made a lovely rag doll for the freckled girl from the first shift.

There was a young boy in this second group who never spoke nor sang throughout the course of the entire week. He was content to walk around the perimeter of the room, for the complete twenty to thirty minutes of the music time. He walked from wall to wall, occasionally even knocking on them, as if he were inspecting the quality of the structure. He looked under things, and climbed on top of them until someone fetched him down. On Friday, when I brought my digital camera, I kept a particularly wary eye on him. I’m not by any means a disciplinarian and would never, ever strike a child but suffice to say, by the look in my eye, he knew not to mess with my gear and that it was not there for his perusal and observation.

The third shift featured one of the cutest little girls I have ever encountered, and by now you should know that when I say this, it is a truly valid statement, as I do not believe that every child is necessarily cute. She had a head full of curly blonde hair and she was one of the few children that actually liked to sing, a welcome change.

However, the third group also contained The Shrieker.

She entered the room every night, a mischievous grin playing about her small oval face. She was an almost freakishly thin little girl, but it became obvious soon enough that she indeed got enough to eat – her mouth was usually open wide enough that you could guess what she had eaten for dinner. By the time her shrill voice fades from my memory, it will very likely be time to volunteer for VBS again.

Tuesday was by far the most stressful day of the Vacation Bible School week, for me, anyway. Amy was at choir practice, and this left me in charge. You cannot fathom the kind of terror this filled me with. If I were to ever appear on Fear Factor, I am pretty sure that I would not be eating cockroaches or bathing in a tub full of scorpions. No, I would be left alone with a group of four-year-olds to fend for myself in a precarious inward battle for psychological stability.

Thankfully, this wasn’t Fear Factor, and I wasn’t completely alone. As mentioned before, each group came with one or two leaders. One of the leaders was Sarah, a friend of mine who is excellent with kids. This was one of the times during the week when I found myself being grown spiritually – I was profusely thanking God.

Still, things could have gone better. I really wanted the kids to have fun, so I made a deal with them. If they sang, they could sing as loud as they wanted and could move however they wanted – sitting down was fine, dancing was fine, jumping was fine, whatever would keep them satisfied and get the evening over with.

Lesson Learned: Allowing children to sing as loudly as desired eventually equates to nonsensical screaming. Also, providing no guidelines on movement eventually equates to running after one another and getting extremely little out of their VBS music time.

Even the well-behaved curly-haired blonde girl was engaging in the chaos. When I returned home that night, my clothes were damp with sweat. This was the only time this happened over the course of the five days, so I feel it’s safe to say that it was not the temperature of the room but rather the intense stress of fearing for my own sanity.

Although my tone in this article has been enveloped with sarcasm, I must admit – the week wasn’t that bad. I may even volunteer next year.

And whichever soccer mom ends up as the VBS coordinator next summer, they may not even need to ask.