Since the fire in our elementary school happened in the late summer, we all had to start this year in new schools. I was supposed to start the sixth grade this year, but since I’m one of the ‘brains’ they decided to have me skip a grade and start junior high school a year sooner.

Great, just what I didn’t want to happen. I mean I was the smallest in my class as it was; now, I’ll be the smallest in the whole darn school! Another year of utter torment, once I leave the house, get to the bus stop, the ride to school on the bus, and thankfully, quickly if at all possible into my classroom. I hope that the teacher will be there and I will be left alone. Safe until lunchtime, when again I am on the defensive until I make it into the library. Yes, I spend my lunchtime at the library, much safer and a lot more peaceful than anywhere else in school. After my so-called lunch and recess break, I wait for the last minute and head back to class. I wait with the others to board the bus; the ride home is anything but peaceful as the girls all the way home tease me.

The Euros are on so here's a little football/soccer themed story to mark the occasion.

*the Euros is a football/soccer tournament for those that don't know

Synopsis: Ashley has been offered the chance to play soccer in America and with his old high-school buddy acting as his crumby agent what could possibly go wrong?

There are also a few jokes aimed at American/British differences that may or may not be lost on some of you.

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I'd been on hormones, a super birth-control pill called Ovaril, for four months, and had already made three trips to the endocrinologist, suffered through four additional trips to the lab to have blood taken, and now I was back to see Dr. Harrison. The handsome part of endocrinology.

He asked me about how things were going.

My answer was, in essence, "Not fast enough."