Reflections on the first 525,600

..minutes, that is, since Tipping Bucket was officially organized, April 8 2009.

There’s a scene in the 1991 film “Hook” (I know, you haven’t thought about that movie in 10 years...me neither) when the thoroughly grown-up, and very hungry, Peter Pan sits down to a ‘feast’ at what looks for all the world like a completely empty table. As the rag-tag band of lost boys around him begin stuffing their faces with the apparently sumptuous but invisible bounty, Peter is first bewildered, then annoyed, then furious until a very large, very buttery, very...real stray gob of mashed potato mortar lands right in his face and the lost boys’ feast is suddenly visible in all its glory--to him, and to all of us.

I feel like that gob of mashed potatoes finally landed a few weeks ago: Standing in the doorway of a friend’s apartment and hearing someone behind him shout, “Dude! It tipped--the bucket’s overflowing!” I could almost feel the warm goo dripping off my nose. After months of planning and prepping, debating, decoding, brainstorming, building, breaking, blundering and budding with an incredible group of individuals who either loved the idea or loved me (occasionally both) the ‘feast’ we’d been talking incessantly and gesturing wildly about was actually materializing.

Other people could see it.

Other people could use it.

And it was working!

We’ve tipped four buckets, octupled(?) our membership, and raised $7000 since then, and the food fight is just getting started. The scene in “Hook” ends when the littlest lost boy, dripping with pudding, potato and pot roast and grinning from ear to ear turns to Peter and murmurs, “that was a great game.”

I’m confident it will be.