Your name is what now?

I helped chaperone my daughter's last seventh-grade dance last night. This time, much to the delight of my poor elderly ears, I was not in the over-amped gymnasium but standing by the front door of the school, checking the names of arriving children off a list of all students in good standing. Let me just give my fellow parents a piece of advice here: If you are dropping your young person off at an event which might require them to have their names checked off a list, please drill them a bit before they get out of the car as to what letter of the alphabet their name starts with. I can't tell you how many kids stood, dumbfounded, staring at the signs that said "A-L" and "M-Z" and using up every last brain cell trying to figure out what line they belonged in. And they still got it wrong more often than not. Since the room was noisy, what with all those cerebral wheels whirring, I often had to ask kids to just tell me the first letter of their last name, at which point most of them told me their first name. I'll tell you, it all made me feel a lot better about my daughter and her learning disabilities. She, at least, got in the right line.