12

I suggested that we call our team the "Twisted Wizards," and get the Game Hut to sponsor us. Nobody liked my idea, though. One kid said we should call the team the "Red Sox," which I thought was a terrible idea. Number one, the Red Sox are a baseball team, and number two, our soccer uniforms are blue. But of course everyone else loved the idea, and that's the name that won out. Then the assistant coach, Mr. Boone, said he was worried that if we called our team the Red Sox, we might get sued. I'm pretty sure those guys have better things to do than to go around suing middle school soccer teams, but like I said before, nobody wanted to listen to my opinions. So the team voted to change the name to "Red socks," and that was final.

After that we started practice. Mr. Litch and Mr. Boone made us run laps and do leg-lifts and a bunch of other stuff that had nothing to do with soccer. In between wind sprints, I hung out by the water cooler with the other two Pre-Alpha Minus guys. And every time we were slow getting back to the field, Mr. Litch would yell- GET YOUR BUTTS OVER HERE! Me and the other guys thought it would be pretty funny if the next time Mr. Litch said that, we all ran at him with our butts sticking out. So the next time Mr. Litch yelled for us to get our butts over there, I ran with my rear end pointed at him. But the other guys totally hung me out to dry.

Mr. Litch did not appreciate my sense of humor, and he made me run three extra laps. When Dad picked me up at the end of practice, I told him that maybe this soccer thing wasn't such a good idea, and that he should probably just let me quit. That made Dad pretty mad, so he said— NO SON OF MINE IS A QUITTER! Which isn't really true at all. I'm a huge quitter, and so is Rodrick. And I think Manny is on his third or fourth preschool by now.

Anyway, I got the feeling that if I'm gonna get out of soccer, I'm gonna have to think of another angle. Friday Ever since I started playing soccer, I've been going through my clothes twice as quick as I did before. I've been totally out of clean stuff to wear for a while now, so I've been pulling all of my clothes out of my dirty laundry piles. But I found out today that recycling clothes from the dirty laundry pile can be risky. I was walking by some girls in the hallway today, and a pair of dirty underwear fell out of one of my pant legs. nkledc. I just kept walking and hoped that the girls might think the underwear wasn't actually mine.

But I paid the price for that decision later on in the day. A PAIR OF BOYS' UNDERPANTS WITH THE NAME "GREG H." WRITTEN ON THE WAISTBAND WAS FOUND IN THE HALLWAY. WOULD THE OWNER PLEASE COME TO THE FRONT OFFICE TO RETRIEVE HIS ARTICLE OF CLOTHING? I think I'd better hurry up and learn how to do my laundry, because I'm really running out of options. Tomorrow I'm gonna have to wear a T-shirt I got from my Uncle Gary's first wedding, and I'm really not looking forward to it.

I was kind of down in the dumps on the walk home from school today, but then something happened to change that. Rowley told me one of his friends from karate was having a sleepover this weekend, and he asked me if I wanted to come along. I was about to say "no way," but then Rowley said something that got my attention. The kid who's having the party lives on Pleasant Street, which is in the same neighborhood that Holly Hills lives in.