Bumper Sliders (an Albert Story) by Michael Osias

Mom looked at us as if we had just said her favorite soap opera had been cancelled. She wasn't happy.

"You boys have been fighting again, haven't you? Who was it this time? Can't you walk home from school just one day without getting into a scrap?"

Which was a major exaggeration. I quickly calculated that actually we averaged two and half  fights per week. Which is quite acceptable when you consider we had to walk past the front doors of the Protestant School 4 times a day, twenty times a week (except for Catholic Holidays of course) which works out to just over ten percent. I decided not to bring this up to Mom, at least not at that moment. By the way, I got an A+ in math. Grade six was a cinch.

The thing is, we hadn't been in a fight. Our torn and muddy winter jackets, missing mittens, scrapes, bruises, and cuts were a result of something much worse. Something  we could never admit to. Something that would surely get us grounded right through until after we were dead. No, it wasn't a scrap at all.

We had been bumper sliding.