Laughter = Vitamin C for the soul

When I realized my cold wasn't going to go away within a day, I went to the store on campus and bought two large (16oz) bottles of orange juice. Yesterday morning, before I headed off to my observation at a local school, I tried to open one of the bottles. I struggled and was unsuccessful. So I tried the other bottle. Couldn't get the second one open either.

Lucky for me, I still had some orange juiceboxes from when I student-taught last semester. (I always brought a bag lunch.) Two of those worked fine for breakfast, but I was frustrated that I had been unable to open the bottles!

This afternoon, a brilliant idea struck me. When my craving for orange juice kicked in, I took the bottle over to the other side of the floor where the football players live. Voila! After the one kid laughed at me, he easily opened the bottle for me. Problem solved!

. . .

A few minutes ago, the boys were getting ready to go out. Like usual, they're playing music loudly, yelling back and forth down their hallway, and slamming doors. I innocently went over in my satiny modest (long-sleeved, long pants) pajamas with another bottle of orange juice.

One of the boys saw me and said, "Oh hey Estrella. Are we being too loud?" (They're used to me going over there and asking them to be quiet and more considerate. In fact, last semester, they called me The Undertaker because of the stern looks I gave them. Since then, we've warmed up to one another and one of the kids even leaves sweet notes on the message board on my door.)

I said, "Actually, I was wondering ... can you open this for me?" The other boys were going in and out of their rooms, and some of them greeted me too. They laughed at me in my silly pajamas while the one guy opened the orange juice for me. The other guys hadn't heard me asking him to do that, so they teased me about that too.

"Well ... I heard you guys getting ready ... and I figured I should ask you now since you're not gonna be up and around the floor when I wake up tomorrow," I tried to explain, laughing along with them.

Ah ... the joys of being in college ... hard to believe it's gonna change in less than 3 months!