This past weekend, I attended my first THON. My sorority had made LionShrine the previous year, meaning we had earned enough money to have 5 girl dancers and 5 boy dancers on the floor this year. I'll have to admit that I didn't know the dancers (seniors) very well, nor did I have any idea what THON would really be like, though I had spent hours upon hours soliciting funds in various ways. The whole weekend, I got 8 hours of sleep, ate 8 subway sandwiches, an entire pizza, 4 soft pretzels, and too many large dippin' dots to count (yeah, I don't really have any meal points left) and lost my voice from so much excited screaming. Sounds like a bad weekend? Not at all. One of the best of my life. I'm not going to go into detail about what I learned at THON or what it is about. I'm just going to tell you how my screaming radiant positivity kept the dancers going, or so they say.
One of our dancers, when I went down to the floor, told me that every time she looked up, I had the biggest smile on my face and was dancing like an idiot in the stands, and that it kept her going even when she was about to stop. She told me to keep it up, it would really make a difference in how our dancers survived. I did. I really honestly don't think I wiped that smile off my face, even amidst my delirium and slowly approaching laringitis. It's crazy that a smiling, dancing supporter can keep someone awake and on their feet for 46 hours so that they can help kids fight cancer. My smile helped keep our dancers going with an energy derived from all of the positive support. Keep smiling, and you might help pull someone through the roughest, and longest, of hours.
In case you're fancying a visual of my overwhelming positivity:
I love this! And I think we can all tell that you had an amazing time since your voice is still gone, even though it was great during your speech =)
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