Diary of a Wimpy Kid

the rest of us guys scrambling for the other spots. The best I can figure is that I'm somewhere around 52nd or 53rd most popular this year, but the good news is that I'm about to move up one spot because Charlie Davies is above me and he's getting his braces next week. I try to explain all this popularity stuff to my friend Rowley, who is probably hovering right around the 150 mark by the way, but I think it just goes in one ear and out the other with him. Wednesday Today, we had phys ed, so the first thing I did when I got outside was sneak off to the basketball court to see if the cheese was still there, and sure enough, it was. That piece of cheese has been sitting on the blacktop since last spring. I guess it must have dropped out of someone's sandwich or something. After a couple of days, the cheese started getting all moldy and nasty. Nobody would play basketball on the court where the cheese was, even though that was the only court that had a hoop with a net. Then one day, this kid named Darren Walsh touched the cheese with his finger, and that's what started this thing called the cheese touch. It's basically like the cooties. If you get the cheese touch, you're stuck with it until you pass it on to someone else. The only way to protect yourself from the cheese touch is to cross your fingers. But it's not that easy remembering to keep your fingers crossed every moment of the day. I ended up taping mine together so they'd stay crossed all the time. I got a D in handwriting, but it was totally worth it. This one kid named Abe Hall got the cheese touch in April, and nobody would even come near him for the rest of the year. This summer, Abe moved away to California and took the cheese touch with him. I just hope someone doesn't start the cheese touch up again, because I don't need that kind of stress in my life anymore. Thursday I'm having a seriously hard time getting used to the fact that summer is over and I have to get out of bed every morning to go to school. My summer did not exactly get off to a great start, thanks to my older brother, Roderick. A couple of days into summer vacation, Roderick woke me up in the middle of the night. He told me I slept through the whole summer, but that luckily I woke up just in time for the first day of school. You might think I was pretty dumb for falling for that one, but Roderick was dressed up in his school clothes, and he set my alarm clock ahead to make it look like it was the morning. Plus, he closed my curtain so I couldn't see that it was still dark out. After Roderick woke me up, I just got dressed and went downstairs to make myself some breakfast, like I do every morning on a school day. But I guess I must have made a pretty big racket because the next thing I knew, Dad was downstairs, yelling at me for eating Cheerios at three o'clock in the morning. It took me a minute to figure out what the heck was going on. After I did, I told Dad that Roderick had played a trick on me, and he was the one that should be getting yelled at. Dad walked down to the basement to chew Roderick out, and I tagged along. I couldn't wait to see Roderick get what was coming to him. But Roderick covered up his tracks pretty good, looking like he was sound asleep, and to this day I'm sure Dad thinks I've got a screw loose or something. Friday Today at school we got assigned to reading groups. They don't come right out and tell you if you're in the gifted group or the easy group, but you can figure it out right away by looking at the covers of the books they hand out. Einstein as a Child, or Bink Says Boo. I was pretty disappointed to find out I got put in the gifted group, because that just means a lot of extra work. When they did the screening at the end of last year, I did my best to make sure I got put in the easy group this year by acting stupid. Mom is real tight with our principal, so I'll bet she stepped in and made sure I got put in the gifted group again. Mom is always saying I'm a smart kid, but that I just don't apply myself. But if there's one thing I learned from Roderick, it's to set people's expectations real low so you end up surprising them by practically doing nothing at all. Actually, I'm kind of glad my plan to get put in the easy group didn't work. I saw a couple of the Bink Says Boo kids holding their books upside down, and I don't think they were joking. Saturday Well, the first week of school is finally over, so today, I slept in. Most kids wake up early on Saturday to watch cartoons or whatever, but not me. The only reason I get out of bed at all on weekends is because I don't want to get up