Went and watched my son and his classmates get utterly and completely humiliated in a Battle of the Books competition today.  Of the six schools in the round they were in, they came in sixth.  They had one point at the end.  The winning team, in comparison, had 145. 

The fact of the matter is that the failure lies largely in the lap of the coaches from their school.  These kids were NOT prepared.  They were quizzed from a list of questions about the books that the coaches used (I’m assuming) for the competition at the school to select the team.  They knew that list very well, but seemed to know diddly about anything that happened in the books otherwise.  When asked about studying for the contest, Alex said they were working with the list.  He was never instructed to read the books again.  He wasn’t, apparently, quizzed on anything outside of those lists…Hell, they didn’t even co-ordinate wearing the same shirts.  Every other team had all their kids in the same shirts.  Our team looked like they wandered in off the street.

Needless to say, it was humiliating for him.

On top of that, his baseball team has lost 13 games in a row with only 7 games left in the season.  My sister says that’s a failure on the part of the coaches there as well, and makes some very valid points for that argument.  At the very least, it is safe to say that the boys aren’t enjoying themselves.

My son is learning a lot about losing this year.

But wait…today gets better….

I got phone call shortly after getting home from my sister, who was nearly hysterical.  Turns out my nephew is deploying to Iraq after all.  Gee, color me surprised. 

Yep….today is a ball of suck.