Filling Christmas hampers is a serious sport

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/12/2015 (3898 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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It’s something of a Christmas miracle — I made it through an entire charity event on Tuesday without sustaining a crippling injury.

As regular readers know, in recent years I have wounded myself in a variety of ways — everything from a torn Achilles tendon to bruised buttocks — while competing in media challenges for charity.

Last December, for instance, I pulled one of the major muscles in my back during a hamper-packing battle in support of the Christmas Cheer Board, which caused me to flip-flop in bed all night long, which caused my wife, She Who Must Not Be Named, to want to smother me with a pillow.

So you can understand why I was sweating profusely on Tuesday when I showed up at the Madison Square Safeway store for this year’s hamper challenge to help the Cheer Board kick off its 96th campaign helping the city’s hungry enjoy the festive season.

This demanding challenge pits two-person media teams against one another in a race to see who is the fastest at packing a Christmas hamper intended for a family of three. I was partnered with Shaw TV’s Tracy Koga on the grounds she was the only media personality willing to have me as a teammate.

Tracy’s role was to physically put things into the hamper, whereas my job was to root through huge bins for the items we needed, elbow other media personalities in the face, then run back to Tracy with the stuff on our list.

In a cruel twist, this year we were forced to race out into the store aisles and track down a mystery ingredient — Hamburger Helper in our case — before we could get our mitts on the list of items to go in our hamper.

Normally, after grabbing an item from the bins, I would have flung them baseball-style at my partner, but I did not think Tracy would appreciate that strategy, so I politely carried them back.

It is hard, using mere words, to describe how exhausting it is trading elbows with other media persons in a bid to grab food items out of a large plastic bin, but I will try: It is very exhausting!

At the end of the event, my heart was pounding and I was soaked with sweat, but the unique combination of my foot speed and Tracy’s packing ability resulted in our team finishing — cue Rocky theme music — dead last.

The problem was, not only do you have to be able to close your hamper at the end of the race, the folks from the cheer board inspect it to ensure you have packed the correct size and quantity of each item.

We were penalized because our box of stuffing was too (bad word) big, and instead of two bags of rice, I had mistakenly given Tracy a box of rice. But my packing partner was gracious in defeat.

“It (defeat) stings a bit, but I think we did really well,” Tracy beamed as I stood huffing and puffing. “We just need to make sure we look at sizes in the future.”

The hamper-packing crown went to Energy 106 FM morning hosts Jenna Khan and Frankie Hollywood, who have hammered me in several media challenges.

Frankie credited their victory to hardcore training. “I’ve been kicked out of Safeway stores for packing boxes that didn’t need to be packed,” he chirped. “I tell them I’m training to beat Doug Speirs. If you’re gonna do it right, you have to prepare. Oh, and thanks for elbowing me in the neck, Doug.”

Linda Grayston, the cheer board’s assistant chief elf, conceded my hamper-packing skills are somewhat lacking. “At least you didn’t bleed this time,” Linda said. “You did some good blocking at the food bins, and you didn’t need any First Aid, so that was positive.”

It seems packing speed is a major issue, because the board is hoping to fill up to 18,500 hampers this season.

“That’s a lot of work,” Kai Madsen, the cheer board’s head elf, told me. “We need volunteers to help with the packing process and to handle hamper applications. And when we start delivering hampers on Dec. 10, we need drivers to get them to the folks that need them.”

Kai noted the demand for hampers never slows down. “It’s about the same level as last year,” he said. “We need to raise $900,000 to pay for the things we need to buy. The groceries we get donated represent about half what goes in the hampers. The rest we have to buy.”

The board is counting on Free Press readers to fill the 53,600 grocery bags that were delivered along with Tuesday’s newspaper.

“There’s a list on the bags of things we need,” Kai said. “Fill the bag, fill the need and bring it in to any Safeway store and leave it in the food bin.”

Donations are already rolling in, but things are off to a slow start this season. “I think that happens when people are dealing with big events like the Grey Cup,” he said. “But now it’s time to focus on the Cheer Board. Keep in mind it’s only three weeks until Christmas.”

Which means it’s time to get off the couch and start filling those 18,500 hampers, kids. It doesn’t hurt at all — unless you get too close to my razor-sharp elbows.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca