Does it count as volunteering if your hand isn't raised.

I had planned on writing about another topic today, but the last few days have caused me to muse about volunteering.
My definition of volunteering was the act of giving time, money, or skills without need of compensation. Okay so maybe that isn't the Webster definition, but it's close enough.

Over the years, well at least since my children were of school age, volunteering seemed to be a major part of my life. Leading a committee, offering to bake or make large amounts of food, even becoming an officer in a parent organization, all these were just the way it was. That was fine, after all "if I dont' do it...who will?"
Most of the time I did raise the proverbial hand, gleefully calling out.."I'll do it!" Most of these times it seems as though the task was manageable, so of course I continued to volunteer.

Yes I was the parent volunteer who manned the fire dept. safe house, and the mom on the list as the emergency chaperone, ( how long will we be gone?), and the ( cringe) brownie cookie mom.
As the kids got older, so did the tasks that came from putting my old hand up in the air.
Selling advertisements in programs, arranging entire celebratory events, and ordering the correct amounts of mongrammed clothing for young athletes, even going so far as to meet the supplier. This may have been the time period when I stopped in my tracks and tried to remember, how I volunteered for these tasks.
It was then that I realized that technically I didn't really volunteer in the truest sense of the word.

I always attended the meetings firm in the belief that maybe someone else should step up. I would shake my head no, but always cave when the giver of the tasks would look at me and with that colgate smile say ever so sweetly "but this job was made for you..who else could pull it off?" Or when no one else would volunteer and the leader of the group would look me directly in the eye, and give me THAT LOOK...
So I would bite the bullet, and take on the request.

Recently my daughter was given a task that for all the world should have been one that she had volunteered to do. It had grown in proportion from the intial handoff.
So being mom, I ageed to help.
After all should I let my daughter have all the fun, drinking large sums of coffee, going on little sleep, doing a lot of grumbling, or struggling with the unfamiliar computer program? So I helped. After a lot of sniping, and stugging and snacking, and a bit of procrasination along the way we finished the chore at hand, kinda.

A job that neither of us volunteered to do, and a less than wonderful reaction from the giver of the job.
We will "do a bit of touching up" over the next week or so, but I will be spending some time looking in the mirror, saying "no thanks I have too much on my plate right now." Right after I get those ten photos printed out and framed...