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That really bugged Rodrick, so he drove off to the store and came back fifteen minutes later with some headphones. And that pretty much took care of the problem. Thursday Yesterday Rodrick got a new heavy metal CD, and it had one of those "Parental Warning" stickers on it. I have never gotten to listen to one of those Parental Warning CDs, because Mom and Dad never

let me buy them at the mall. So I realized the only way I was gonna get a chance to listen to Rodrick's CD was if I snuck it out of the house. This morning, after Rodrick left, I called up Rowley and told him to bring his CD player to school. Then I went down to Rodrick's room and took the CD off his rack. You're not allowed to bring personal music players to school, so we had to wait to use it until after lunch when the teachers let us outside. As soon as we got the chance, me and Rowley snuck around the back of the school and loaded up Rodrick's CD. But Rowley forgot to put batteries in his CD player, so it was pretty much worthless. Then I came up with this great idea for a game. The object was to put the headphones on your head and

then try to shake them off without using your hands. The winner was whoever could shake the headphones off in the shortest amount of time. I had the record with seven and a half seconds, but I think I might have shook some of my fillings loose with that one. Right in the middle of our game, Mrs. Craig came around the corner and caught us red-handed. She took the music player away from me and started chewing us out.

But I think she had the wrong idea about what we were doing back there. She started telling us how rock and roll is "evil" and how it's going to ruin our brains. I was going to tell her that there weren't even any batteries in the CD player, but I could tell she didn't want to be interrupted. So I just waited until she was done, and then I said, "Yes, ma'am." But right when Mrs. Craig was about to let us go, Rowley started blubbering about how he doesn't want rock and roll to ruin his "brains." Honestly, sometimes I don't know about that boy. Friday Well, now I've gone and done it. Last night, after everyone was in bed, I snuck

downstairs to listen to Rodrick's CD on the stereo in the family room. I put Rodrick's new headphones on and cranked up the volume really high. Then I hit "play." First, let me just say I can definitely understand why they put that "Parental Warning" sticker on the CD. But I only got to hear about thirty seconds of the first song before I got interrupted. It turns out I didn't have the headphones plugged into the stereo. So the music was actually coming through the speakers, not the headphones.

Dad marched me up to my room and shut the door behind him, and then he said— LET'S YOU AND ME HAVE A TALK, FRIEND. Whenever Dad says "friend" that way, you know you're in trouble. The first time Dad ever said