Are You New?

Kelly is home from school today with a sore throat. It started last night and this morning when she got up she couldn't even talk without it causing pain. No fever, runny nose, congestion or other symptoms, just a sore throat. I ran her to the doc-in-the-box at 8am hoping to get her to school later. No luck. It's not strep, but probably a virus. She feels fine otherwise, but the doctor wrote her a note for school and that was the end of that.

I picked up Craig after school, then stopped by the middle school to get some stuff out of Kelly's locker. Craig came in with me and while I was digging through the debris pile at the bottom of her locker, some girls saw Craig, stopped, and asked him, "Are you new?" I couldn't see him, but from the tone of his voice I can imagine what his face looked like. "What?" he asked. "Are you new?" "No, I'm a sophmore," he replied, quite dignified. "Oh . . . what are you doing here?" This should have been obvious, even to a seventh grader. I guess they were just keen to keep the conversation going. He said, "Going to my sister's locker." "Who's your sister?" "Kelly Chamberlain." "Wow! You're tall just like Kelly." At this point I finished my digging and stood up. I couldn't tell which girls were so interested in my son, but as we walked away I could hear people saying, "He's new." Too funny!

And for the record, Kelly measured 5' 11 3/4" today at the doctor's office. She was wearing flip-flops so subtract 3/8 of an inch or so.