Tiger Talk: Tiger Pride Service Day is May 19 for Pine River-Backus Schools

PINE RIVER — Our world isn’t perfect, but it never has been. People lie, cheat and deceive as a ritualistic convention.

There are droughts, floods and fires; there are famines, wars and cruelties. It’s a we-scar, they-scar competition.

Humanity lives on the map of these inflamed wounds — prodding at or walking around the irritations — because a person’s own Band-Aid could never hope to heal them.

This is why we need one another — our greatest feats are accomplished together, and we don’t need to change ourselves to do this.

We can be both ordinary and extraordinary when facing our world’s enormities. We can be volunteers.

Dedicated to the encouragement of precisely this, Pine River-Backus High School will host an annual Tiger Pride Service Day. The event this year, sponsored by area businesses and companies, will occur Friday, May 19, with participation from students and staff alike.

When that notable morning arrives, it will do so vibrantly. The halls will speak with lively voices; the floors will walk with hurried steps; and the walls will grin with mirrored smiles.

This eagerness will continue to exist in every room until it escapes with the community-bound staff and students onto waiting buses.

These individuals will emerge and diverge as grouped volunteers, entering varied outdoor service sites around Pine River and Backus for the day’s duration.

They will unite for the purpose of bettering the community that surrounds them.

Having this motivation in mind, they will pick up faded wrappers from the ditches and pluck spiky weeds from flower beds. They will stoop for fallen twigs and scrounge for grimy cans.

Piles will build from tattered leaves and unwanted vegetation. Trash bags will bloat with littered newspapers, soggy cardboards and crinkled plastics.

When they return, the students and staff will be dirted, scuffed and stained. They will have spent their day as volunteers — as the distinguished individuals that bandage our world’s wounds — and they will still be smiling.

Pine River-Backus Service Day is Friday, May 19. Call 218-587-8082 for more information.

Emily Holtti is a Pine River-Backus High School senior and National Honor Society member.