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rich. A couple of years ago during the holidays, Rowley came over and we had just run out of toilet paper at my house. My family was using these holiday cocktail napkins as a substitute until Dad got to the store again. merry Christmas Rowley thought the holiday napkins were some kind of really fancy toilet paper, and he asked me if my family was rich. I wasn't gonna pass up the opportunity to impress him.

富有。几年前的一个假期里，罗利过来了，我们家的卫生纸刚用完。 我的家人一直在用这些节日鸡尾酒餐巾纸作为替代品，直到爸爸又去了商店。 罗利认为节日餐巾纸是某种非常高级的卫生纸，他问我家里是否有钱。 我不会放过这个给他留下好印象的机会。

YEP. Anyway, I'm Not rich, and that's the problem. I tried to figure out a way a kid my age could get his hands on some cash, and then it hit me: We could start a lawn care service. I'm not talking about some average, run-of-the-mill lawn care service, either. I'm talking about a company that takes lawn care to the next level. We decided to name our company the V.I.P. Lawn Service. We called up the Yellow Pages people and told them we wanted to place an ad in their book. And not just one of those tiny little text ads, but a really big one with full color that takes up two whole pages. But get this: The Yellow Pages people told us it was gonna cost us a few thousand bucks to put our ad in their book.

是的。不管怎样，我并不富有，这就是问题所在。 我试着想办法让我这个年纪的孩子弄到一些钱，然后我灵机一现：我们可以开办一家草坪护理服务公司。 我说的也不是什么普通的草坪护理服务。 我说的是一家将草坪护理提升到一个新水平的公司。 我们决定把我们的公司命名为vip 草坪上的服务。我们打电话给黄页的人，告诉他们我们想在他们的黄页上登广告。 而且不仅仅是那些小小的文字广告，而是一个非常大的全彩广告，占据了整整两页。 但你听着，黄页的人告诉我们，把我们的广告放在他们的黄页上要花几千美元。

I told them that didn't make a lot of sense to me, because how's someone supposed to pay for an ad if they haven't even earned any money yet? Me and Rowley realized we were gonna have to do this a different way, and make our own ads. I figured we could just make flyers and put them in every mailbox in our neighborhood. All we needed was some clip art to get us started. So we went down to the corner store and bought one of those cards women get each other on their birthdays.

我告诉他们，这对我来说没有多大意义，因为如果一个人还没有赚到钱，怎么可能为一个广告付钱呢？ 我和罗利意识到我们必须换一种方式，制作我们自己的广告。 我想我们可以做传单然后把它们放在我们社区的每个邮箱里。 我们只需要一些剪贴画就可以开始了。 于是我们去了街角的商店，买了一张女人们在彼此生日时都会收到的卡片。

Hope your birthday is HOT, HOT, HOT! Then we scanned it into Rowley's computer and pasted pictures of our heads onto the bodies from the card. After that we got some clip art of lawn tools and put it all together. nkledc. Then we printed it out, and I have to

希望你的生日热，热，热！然后我们把它扫描到罗利的电脑里，把我们头部的照片粘贴到卡片上的身体上。 在那之后，我们得到了一些修剪草坪工具的剪贴画，并把它们放在一起。 然后我们把它打印出来，我必须

say, it looked great. V.I.P. LAWN SERVICE PAMPER YOURSELF AND YOUR LAWN WITH OUR AWARD-WINNING, WORLD-CLASS SERVICE! CALL 555-2941 I did some math, and I figured it would cost us at least a couple hundred bucks in color ink cartridges and paper to make enough flyers for the whole neighborhood. So we asked Rowley's dad if he'd go

说，它看起来很棒。的贵宾 草坪服务用我们屡获殊荣的世界级服务来呵护您和您的草坪！我做了一些计算，我估计我们至少要花几百美元买彩色墨盒和纸，才能为整个社区制作足够的传单。 所以我们问罗利的爸爸愿不愿意去

out to the store and get us all the stuff we needed. Mr. Jefferson didn't go for it. In fact, he told us we couldn't use his computer or print out any more copies of our flyer. I was a little surprised by that, because if Mr. Jefferson wanted us to pay him back, he sure wasn't making it easy. But all we could really do was take our one flyer and get out of his office. Then me and Rowley went around from house to house showing everyone our flyer and telling them about the V.I.P. Lawn Service.

去店里把我们需要的东西都买回来。 杰斐逊先生不赞成。 事实上，他告诉我们不能用他的电脑，也不能再打印我们的传单了。 我有点惊讶，因为如果杰斐逊先生想让我们还钱，他肯定不会轻易让我们还钱。 但我们真正能做的就是拿着那张传单离开他的办公室。 然后我和罗利挨家挨户地给每个人看我们的传单，告诉他们贵宾的事 草坪上的服务。