I went down to Davis Bilingual Elementary Magnet School Saturday morning to join in the Adopt-A-School program and see if I could help put "some added sparkle to the historic school," like it said in the TUSD press release. Lots of people were there when I arrived — district employees, parents and children.

After they administered an extensive skills inventory to assess my ability and agility, I was given a rag and some rubber gloves, pointed toward a bucket of cleaning solution and told to join my crew, pictured above, whose job was to clean and disinfect walls, doors, doorknobs, stair rails — pretty much any solid surface we could reach. Though I was badly outmatched in the skills department, especially by the smaller members of the crew, I was able to put my superior height to use in the hard-to-reach areas.

Floors one and two thoroughly cleaned and disinfected, the next step was to put a fresh coat of paint on the walls. When I showed the painting crew my skills inventory printout, they quickly hid the paint rollers, smiled and asked me to put masking tape around the doors and floorboards.

Job completed, I walked over to a woman who was allowed to handle a paint roller and complimented her on the job she was doing. "I wonder if the kids will notice how nice the walls look when they come to school," she mused. Probably not, I answered. But I'm pretty sure it will register somewhere in their consciousness, adding a bit of skip to their step, and sparkle in their eyes.