I'm your ice cream man, baby, stop me when I'm passin' by

What a day this has been. Suley is still engaged in the process of studying for a test which will determine the course of the rest of his life, so you'll have to excuse him for not writing a post for today. Instead, I have enlisted Jen-ayelle (that's how I pronounce it) to perform that task. So, without further ado-doo, I offer you yet another installment from The Jenelle Files:

Last time we left off I was explaining how close my little brother and I used to be, but today I would like to tell you a story about how mischievous I was.

Every day, the ice cream man would come around at the same time, and every day without fail, I would ask my mom for money. Most days she would hand me a dollar if just to shut me up. It got to a point that I began to expect her to give me money. Finally she declared a new rule: only once a week was I entitled to money for the ice cream man. I, of course, did not like this rule. I began looting her change jar every day. I would replace quarters with pennies from my own piggy bank in the hopes that if there was the same volume of change she would not notice the silver coins missing. I pulled this trick successfully for about 2 months before she caught on to my little game. Then the change got dispersed through out the house and hidden. Often I would find little handfuls here and there, but I was lucky if I could scrape together a whole dollar.

Then our school had a fund raiser. We were selling chocolate bars. Only a dollar a piece. Those were the easiest things to sell, the chocolates. I had sold two big box kits within a week, the two I had been sent home with. I had to have at least $50 bucks, which to a twelve year old was like a million dollars.

A few days later I heard the siren call of the ice cream man. I had already used up my weekly allowance and was completely broke. Then an idea hit me. I could just borrow five bucks from the school money and replace it when I got my next week's allowance. It was a fool proof plan. So I borrowed the five dollars and spent every dollar on candy.

The next day, the truck came around at it's usual time, 3:15 on the dot. And once again, I thought..."what the heck?" and proceeded to take another five dollars. This pattern continued for the whole next week, all the time my tab going up. I was digging myself deeper and deeper into a hole. It finally got to the point that only 20 dollars was left. I was feeling nervous about not being able to replace the money and thought that the only way out was to spend it all...in essence, hide the evidence. My strategy was that I would claim that I never received chocolates. So I took my friends and brother out for a nice lunch at the pizza place around the corner.

All of the money and chocolates were gone and due to be handed in the very next day. I rehearsed my story and expressions of surprise. I will say this: it didn't work very well. I got one week of in- school suspension where I had to sit in the rectory alone for a week, which in my opinion was not much of a punishment at all since I could read books all day.
Needless to say, I was extremely embarrassed as the whole school knew what I had done, and from that time on I was not allowed to participate in school fundraisers.