picking your fruit punches

Q's teacher called me tonight - is that ever a completely good thing? :-)
And may I interject here that once again he ended up with an angel of
a teacher? We've had a long line of these angels. Karma is being good to us.

Anyway, I just had to share this because I was LOL (between all my worry and angst of course). Q had some trouble today with his SOL group (and for those of you not in the know in our home state, SOL is not the more common (base) meaning, but Standards of Learning). They have standardized tests coming up in May so they were spilt into groups of 13 kids per team to work together and have some fun contests, etc to help get ready for the tests. Lisa Hill (teacher) told me their first task was to come up with a team name. Apparently, Q was all about Patriot Rebels or something like that, but was out voted. He had an "episode" and lost control for a bit, but pulled it back together. Lisa was just letting me know what happened, and that she was very proud of him for coming to her afterwards (on his own) to talk it over with her. She said he came up, all earnest and troubled and told her he just didn't know what to do about it. He was very concerned about the team name that the group had voted to have - Tropical Stars. "Mrs. Hill!!!! It's just that it... it doesn't make sense. It makes us sound like, like a fruit punch." Lisa told me she burst out laughing despite trying not to. She agreed with him that yes, it did sound like fruit punch. Then she had a talk with him about picking your battles and responsibilities of leaders to stay calm and objective.

It just tickled me. Poor Q. I definitely see his point. They're going to have t-shirts made so he'll have to wear it once a week in the morning. My first instinct is to be glad I'm not in 4th grade anymore, but this kind of stuff never really goes away does it? It just comes back again and again in various disguises. Tropical Stars indeed. :-)