Double Down

Mrs. Heffley is fed up with Greg and his older brother Rodrick. She tells them that they need to start doing more around the house because she is going back to school to finish her master’s degree. Mrs. Heffley creates a chore system where she fills a pillowcase “with little slips of paper that have random jobs written down on them” (97). Rodrick and Greg are to take a slip of paper out of the bag every day and do the chore written on it. Mrs. Heffley incentivizes them by telling them that if they do their chores, she will let them “dip into the Halloween candy a little early” (98). Greg is happy that this will mean even more candy since he has also turned in his balloon and won the jar of candy corn. He hides the jar in the bottom drawer of his dresser so he does not have to share the candy with anyone.

Rodrick adds his own chores to the bag so that he can pretend that taking a nap means completing a chore. Greg polishes the silverware, per one of the slips of paper, and then decides to reward himself with some of his candy corn. He is shocked to discover the drawer open and the jar empty. Greg soon finds the culprit: the pig. The pig has eaten all of Greg’s candy, and looks very sick. Greg does not know what to do, so he calls his father (who is in a meeting), and then his mother (who is at college), to ask for help. Mrs. Heffley asks if the pig has eaten anything strange, and Greg lies, and says he is not sure. Mrs. Heffley tells Greg to get his brother to drive him and the pig to the vet, and she will meet them there. 

Rodrick drives Greg and the pig to the vet in his band’s van. Before they make it to the vet, the pig vomits on the floor of the van. Rodrick is angry with Greg and makes him clean it up. The task is so disgusting that it makes Greg vomit, too, though he manages to get out of the van in time. However, a woman sees Greg and thinks that he and Rodrick are “a couple of bad kids […] [playing] some kind of juvenile prank” (104) and calls the police. Greg gets back in the van and Rodrick speeds away. They get pulled over by the police, but Greg explains the whole story to them. The police leave, and Mrs. Heffley arrives just in time to see the pig vomit up the last of the candy corn.

Mrs. Heffley tells Greg that she is not mad at him, just disappointed. According to Greg, this is much worse than being mad. His mother says that she is “disturbed by [his] ‘pattern of deception,’” (105) and that she does not think he can be trusted. Greg reflects that the last time they had a conversation like this, he was in the fourth grade. His mother used to give him a piece of fruit every day for lunch that he would throw in the garbage instead of eating. When Mrs. Heffley realized that Greg was not eating the fruit, she started putting apples in his lunch. She made Greg promise to bring home the apple core as proof that he had eaten his fruit. If he did not, she would stop putting snacks in his lunch. 

The next day, Greg forgot to bring home the apple core, but instead of taking responsibility and telling the truth, he lied and told her that a bully took his apple. To sell the lie, Greg made up many details about the bully, including a fake name, Curtis Litz. Mrs. Heffley was concerned by the story, and made Greg write a letter to Curtis. She said it “was a good opportunity for [Greg] to learn how to settle a conflict on [his] OWN” (108). The lie spun further out of control and eventually, Mrs. Heffley came into the school to demand to speak to the bully. Greg’s teacher told Mrs. Heffley that there was no student by that name at the school, and Greg said he must be homeschooled. When Mrs. Heffley eventually learned the extent of Greg’s lie, Greg “lost TV privileges for a whole month as punishment” (111).

Greg argues that the reason he lies so much is because he is constantly lied to by his family. He thinks about all the lies his parents and Rodrick have told him. Some of Rodrick’s lies are malicious, and often get him into trouble. Greg still wonders if some of Rodrick’s lies could be true, like the idea that burping indoors could cause the ghost of George Washington to haunt him. Greg believes that he has been “lied to so much over the years, it could take [him] the rest of [his] life to figure out what’s true and what’s not” (125).

Going back to school has been good for Mrs. Heffley, and she is “always in a good mood” (126). She tries to encourage the rest of her family to “try learning new things, too” (126), but Greg is skeptical. He believes that there is only a finite amount of space in people’s brains, and that by “the time you’re eight or nine years old, it’s all filled up” (126).

Mrs. Heffley insists that Greg and Rodrick need to start thinking about their futures. When Greg tells her that he wants to be a video game tester when he grows up, she is unimpressed. She encourages him to be more ambitious, and warns him that if he does not take school seriously, he will end up working as a garbage collector. Greg thinks that being a garbage collector sounds like a pretty cool job, and decides to consider it as a fallback plan. 

Greg’s mother tells him that they come from a smart family, and that “one of [his] great-great-great aunts helped invent a cure for a disease way back when” (131). Again, Greg is skeptical, and thinks about how there are “a lot of real DUMMIES in [their] family, too” (132).

Mrs. Heffley has been trying to get Rodrick to think about college, but Rodrick is more interested in playing in his band. He claimed to have written to some colleges to ask for their brochures, but Mrs. Heffley realized that they were mostly dog colleges. Greg is not sure if Rodrick noticed or not. 

Since she has had little luck with Rodrick on the college front, Mrs. Heffley “turn[s] her attention to [Greg]” (135). She takes him to her college campus, and Greg admits that it is “actually kind of cool” (136). She lets him explore while she goes to class. Greg wanders around for a while, but feels out of place. He goes to the library to wait for his mother to finish her class. He decides to grab a stack of psychology books so that he can pretend he is a very smart kid who is already in college. A girl starts to talk to him and asks him to tutor her in psychology. Greg jumps at the opportunity to talk to a girl and uses his mother’s library card to check out every book on psychology he can find. He studies hard that night, and Mrs. Heffley is thrilled when he asks her if she can take him back to the college the next day. 

Greg tutors the girl for two hours and is convinced that she will get a good grade on her test. Then, the girl’s boyfriend arrives, and the two leave. Greg says that if he had known she had a boyfriend, he would not have bothered learning all that information. He decides that if that is what college is like, he won’t go. He concludes that he is right about learning new information—since he spent so much time learning all about psychology, he fails a test about capital cities at school.