Free The Last Straw by Jeff Kinney

Merit badges are these little patches you get for learning how to do all sorts of manly stuff.
    Me and Rowley started flipping through the merit badge book to see what we should work on.
    Rowley wanted to do something hard like Wilderness Survival or Personal Fitness, but I talked him out of it. I said we should just start off with something nice and easy, so we settled on Whittling.
    But whittling was a lot harder than I thought it would be. It took FOREVER to try to carve a block of wood into anything, and Rowley got a splinter within five minutes.
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    So we went to Mr. Barrett and asked him if there was something less DANGEROUS we could do.
    [Image: Two boys talking to the professor.]
    Mr. Barrett said that if we were having trouble with the wood, maybe we could use soap instead. And that's when I knew I made the right call when I signed up with Troop 133.
    Me and Rowley started carving the soap, but then I found out something really great. If you get the soap wet enough, you can just mold it into any shape you want with your hands. So we put away our whittling knives and SQUEEZED our soap into a shape instead.
    [Image: Two boys sitting at a table.] The caption reads: "SQUISH SQUISH"
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    My first creation was a sheep. I turned it in to Mr. Barrett, and he checked one carving off my list.
    [Image: A molded figure.]
    I didn't really know what to do for my next carving, so I just turned my sheep upside down and handed it back in as the Titanic.
    [Image: A molded figure upside down.]
    And believe it or not, Mr. Barrett accepted THAT one, too.
    [Image: A man talking to the boys.] The caption reads: "A TERRIBLE TRAGEDY, THAT WAS!"
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    So me and Rowley both got our Whittling merit badges and pinned them to our uniforms. When I came home, Dad was really impressed. If I would've known that this was all it took to make him happy, I would have signed up for Boy Scouts about six months ago.

    [Image: A man opens the door for the boy.]

    MAY

    Sunday

    The other day Mr. Barrett announced that our Boy Scout troop was having a father-son campout this weekend, so I asked Dad if he'd go with me. I was pretty surprised with how easy it was to impress Dad with that one little merit badge, so I figured a whole WEEKEND of him seeing me do macho stuff would totally blow him away.

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    But yesterday morning I woke up as sick as a dog. I couldn't go, but Dad HAD to, because he signed up to be a driver.
    [Image: A man looks at the boy in bed.]
    I stayed in bed pretty much the whole day. I just wish I'd gotten sick on a WEEKDAY instead of a weekend. Last year I didn't miss any days of school, and I promised myself I wouldn't let THAT happen again.
    [Image: Two children laughing at the third one.] The caption reads: "CONGRATULATIONS TO GREG HEFFLEY FOR WINNING THE PERFECT ATTENDANCE AWARD.
    NERD!
    HA HA!"
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    The father-son camping trip turned out to be a DISASTER. The phone rang at 10:00 last night, and it was Dad calling from the emergency room.
    [Image: The doctor is talking on the phone with a lady ,a sick boy is standing behind her.]
    Dad got put in a tent with the Woodley brothers, Darren and Marcus, because their dad couldn't come. Darren and Marcus were horsing around in the tent, even though Dad kept telling them to go to sleep. At one point Darren threw a football at Marcus, and it hit him in the stomach.
    [Image: Two boys playing ball as he third sleeps on the ground.] The caption reads: "OOF!"
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    Marcus wet his pants, and I guess Darren thought that was pretty funny.
    [Image: Three boys , one is sleeping.] The caption reads: "HA HA HA!"
    Well, Marcus went totally BERSERK. He bit Darren, and he wouldn't let go, either.
    [Image: The two boys are falling on the sleeping boy.] The caption reads: "CHOMP"
    It took Dad a long time to pry the two of them apart, and he had to take Darren to the emergency room after that.
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    Dad came home this morning, and he was not real happy with ME for getting him stuck in that situation.