First day of tryouts

If I'm springing for dinner for my team captains at Red Robin, it must be baseball season. I cannot believe these boys' voracious appetite. All with bacon double cheeseburgers, bottomless fries, and bottomless sweet lemonade drinks. I just couldn't hang. But, wow, do I ever love Red Robin.

I always feel like I've been let into a secret world when I do this sort of thing, taking out four teenagers for a bite to eat. My favorite exchange was this:

J: "Yo, you ask Ms. _____ what I got on my quiz on Friday?"

Me: "No, but I know _____ (other team captain) got a 100% on it."

J: "Dag, I hate quizzes like that, with characters' names. All dem names are so long and confusing and all look alike. But that book's aight, though." [Note: It's Achebe's Things Fall Apart.

Me: "Oh, so you like it? Good."

J: "No, no, no, I don't like it, I just said it was aight. It's a book, so I don't like it."

So, yeah, today was the first day of tryouts. Because March 1 falls on a Sunday this year, we were allowed to open up the season today. I have about 30 kids trying out for about 20 spots. I have been keeping smaller and smaller teams throughout the years, but I don't think I can this year. Too many good kids, and I just can't imagine myself cutting some of them. My new outlook is that I think it's much worse for me to cut them than it is for them to hear it. Kids can shake stuff like that off. Right?

Regardless, we have a good team, very deep, and it's going to be a good year.