After a few recent changes in the construction class roster, it was time to reorganize our workgroups. Someone suggested we do it gym class-style, i.e. choose captains, then let them take turns picking team members. Choosing captains was easy enough, as there are two obvious standouts among our fourteen classmates. But the notion of a draft was met with collective dread of “being the last one picked.” Even at age 45, the threat of being last pick makes my throat close. We opted to draw names from a hat.

Against all odds, one captain ended up with all three women on his team, while the other captain drew the classmates least likely to show up at school on any given day. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

The all-male team quickly dubbed itself BAMF, a charming acronym that I won’t spell out on this G-rated blog.

Given our surfeit of estrogen, I suggested we call our team Spice Girls. I’d rather brush my teeth with a Sawzall than show up at a SkillsUSA competition as Spice Girls, but it was fun to see steam come out of our captain’s ears. The more apoplectic he got over the idea of being a Spice Girl while his bros got to be Bad-Ass MFs, the louder we sang “Spice Up Your Life!” (I might even have shaken my tool belt a little bit. Brit-Pop is just so doggone catchy.) Anyway, teammate Melanie, aka “Mel,” insisted the name was perfect, since the actual Spice Girls had two Mels.

I gotta hand it to our captain. He played it cool in the face of so much girl power. “Fine,” he conceded. “We can be Spice Girls.” Mel and I thought we had triumphed, but then Captain pointed to me and added, “That makes you Old Spice.”

We have agreed, as a team, that Spice Girls does not capture our essence, so to speak. 

Mel subsequently suggested “Sparkle Magic,” which provoked more steam from our captain’s ears. But then someone tweaked it to “Spackle Magic,” which is actually kind of cool, given the amount of drywall in our Building Construction Technology curriculum, and is now the frontrunner for our team title. We’ll vote officially next week. I’ll keep you posted.

Go, Spackle Magic!