Don't Wear Polka-Dot Underwear with White Pants: (And Other Lessons I've Learned) Read Online Free

“Dennis has those freckles all of the time.” Though, to tell you the truth, I’d really like to ask Dennis how he got those freckles so I could get some for myself. But I never, ever talk to Dennis in a nice way.
    Also, I will never be wearing polka-dot underwear again thanks to Dennis, which makes me kind of sad, because I do love polka dots and I am pretty sure they were my lucky pair. But nowthey make me feel kind of embarrassed and hot on the forehead.
    Mom keeps telling me to play outside with Timmy after school, which is no fun. Even when I tell her I want to read, she shoos me out the door and says I need “fresh air.” Mom is always telling me not to be fresh, so I don’t know why the air is allowed to be.
    Timmy looks nothing like me, I think, so I like to pretend that he is not my brother at all. He has blue eyes, and blue eyes are much closer to Rainbow Sparkle’s purple eyes than my brown ones, so this makes me mad. I’d like to have blue eyes too, and sometimes I wonder if there is a way I can steal them from Timmy.
    â€œPush me, Mandy?” he asks.
    â€œNo,” I answer, because I am the boss. But I do not feel like swinging or running or going in the sandbox myself, so I decide that I am going to pretendI like Timmy just for today and let him play Squash the Lemon with me on our slide. I will even be the anchor at the bottom so that Timmy can squash me, which I think is pretty generous because squashing is the best part of the game.
    â€œCome here,” I tell him. “I am going to let you play my favorite game.”
    â€œYippee!” Timmy pops off the swing as fast as a preschooler can pop and walks over to the slide.
    â€œI am going to slide down first,” I explain. “Then you are going to slide down after me like this.” I climb up the ladder, which is not nearly as high as the one on the playground, and show him how to slide down with his legs hanging off both sides of the slide. “You got it?”
    â€œGot it!” Timmy says. I climb back up the slide and go down the regular way, which is a very boring way to slide. Timmy climbs up the ladder behind me, drapes his legs over each side of theslide, and slithers down. He bumps into me when he reaches the bottom, and it barely hurts at all, which is not fun in this case.
    This is the problem with playing Squash the Lemon with a three-year-old, especially when there is only one of them.
    â€œYou need to go much faster, or else this game is no fun,” I explain. “I will show you.” I sit him at the bottom of the slide real tight so I can slide into him. Then I climb up the ladder, drape my legs over the sides, and slide down at my fastest speed ever.
    And I knock Timmy off the slide and into the grass.
    And then he cries, because he can’t even take a little squashing.
    â€œI’m going to tell Mommy,” he says, so I call him a baby and walk to the side of the house to be by myself.
    The side of our house is a little bit spooky. Not spooky like Halloween or anything, but it has some weeds and some cobwebs and a lot of dead leaves. No one ever goes to the side of our house but me. I don’t even like it that much, but it is better than nothing.
    There are always a lot of bugs here. I do not love bugs, but I do not hate them either. I look along the bricks on the side of my house to see if there is anything interesting. One time I found a bird’s nest lying next to it, but with no eggs inside, which was less exciting (and plus, Mom wouldn’t let me touch the nest because she thought I would get a disease).
    I walk along the side slowly, trying to put on my best scientist eyes like Mrs. Spangle talks about during our science lessons. It is not sunny here, so at least I do not need the fancy-dancy periwinkle sunglasses that Mom won’t buy me. Irun the fingers of my left hand along the house to see if anything feels different. There is nothing for a