What's Better Than No Shave November??? SILVER RUSH

I have some bad news folks. No shave November is over. Done. Won't be back 'til next year. I for one am extending the no shave celebration and growing my own leg warmers because growing your own is a lot easier than knitting your own and less expensive than buying your own.

Even though November is over, there are lots of good things about December like icy roads and finals and last minute Christmas shopping and mistletoe and hot chocolate and peace on earth or at least on 1-15 and egg nog. But one of my favorite things about December is Silver Rush.



For the first time since 2001, I do not have a student attending RHS, but that didn't stop me from being that "creeper mom" and going to the Silver Rush opening assembly. It did stop my children from saying, "Creepy mom, why are you here?" which was kind of nice. I like to go every year. It puts me in the Christmas spirit and gives me a bigger high than not shaving my legs for the whole month of November.

In the month of December, about 2,000 students from Riverton High School go bonkers earning money for a designated charity. They go door to door doing odd jobs for people like scooping dog poop and putting up Christmas lights and taking out garbage. They have dance-athons and pay money to put people in jail and have concerts and basketball tournaments and a Mr. RHS contest. They sell carrots and t-shirts and necklaces and sock snowmen and hot chocolate and muffins and saxagrams, which is a sexy serenade by a saxophone player in case you're wondering. They have the Silver Wolf Swap where the cheerleaders play the drill team in a basketball game, while the girl's basketball team does a drill number and the boy's basketball team cheers. Last year in 3 short weeks they earned $133,689.15. Since the opening of the school in 1999, they have earned more than $1.1 million dollars.

At my high school we had the cool kids which were the cheerleaders, student body officers and the jocks. We had the "not cool kids" who were the band geeks and drama nerds and just about everyone else. Silver Rush brings the entire student body together. At Riverton there are just a lot of cool kids who are involved in a lot of different things who love and respect each other and work their fannies off for something more important than a social class ranking.

In past years RHS has raised money to help people with congenital heart defects, people who need wheelchairs, the homeless, refugees, people fighting alcohol and drug addiction, just to name a few.  This year they are funding for Mitchell's Journey, a local non-profit established to help fight Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). Not only do they raise funds, but students are educated about the cause they're funding for. This is stuff you can't learn from a textbook. This is community. This is service. This is life.

Perhaps principal Carolyn Gough said it best in an interview last year with Fox 13's Todd Tanner. "This is a great opportunity for the students to change people's lives, but really it ends up changing us."

For a list of Silver Rush activities or to donate, go here.