Ramona and Her Father

This one was my fav-o-rite growing up, so I’m really excited to recap it!

The book opens with Payday, and Ramona, who is now in second grade, is sitting in her chair making a joyful noise unto the Lord (Ye-e-eep!) and making out her Christmas list. The fact that it is September doesn’t seem to bother her. Her list includes mice or ginny (sic) pig, myna bird that talks, and cuckoo clock. I want those things too! We get some foreshadowing when Mrs. Quimby opens the fridge and says it’s a good thing it’s payday. Word, Mrs. Quimby. I love payday, too. Ramona convinces her mom that they should go to the Whopperburger. That’s a clever disguise for Burger King, there, Beverly.

Anyway, Beezus comes in and bitchfaces about school and how all of her friends are boring and she doesn’t want to do creative writing, and then she calls Ramona a pest. Um, Beezus? Have you ever read any of these books? It’s pretty clear that God hates you. I’d rather be a pest. When Beezus leaves the room, Ramona asks why Beezus is being such a brat lately, and her mom says she’s reached a difficult age. Um, PMS?

Ramona’s dad gets home and he’s brought gummy bears and the news that he’s been laid off. Ruh roh. Looks like no Whopperburger for y’all tonight. Mrs. Quimby only works part time, they’ve just added a new room to their house, and the Quimbys are going to be broke. I get that. My cutie pie husband and I have good jobs, but if one of us couldn’t work we’d be screwed. No judgment here. Beezus says she could babysit to help out, and Ramona tries to think of ways she can help. Lemonade stands don’t make much money, and she has pounded rose petals and soaked them in water to make perfume before (the fuck?) but it usually just smells like rotten rose petals. Oookay. Ramona decides that the best way she can help is by marking things off her Christmas list. Aw, Ramona. That’s cute, but you’re not coming off as very smart right now. She marks everything off except for mice, and then writes one happy family and draws four smiling faces and a happy cat face. *tear*

It’s been a week or two, and Mr. Quimby still doesn’t have another job, but he doesn’t seem like he’s being very proactive, because all he does is sit around the house and smoke and watch TV. He says something about a little boy in a commercial making a million dollars, so Ramona decides that she’s going to start trying to be in a commercial. She starts practicing all the time and watches TV for commercials with children. Then she goes around singing the little ditties and repeating all the kids’ lines, hoping that someone will see her and decide to cast her in a commercial. I TOTALLY DID THAT! Ramona, you made me into the weird kid in school, dammit. It’s going to take a while for you to gain back my trust, just so you know.

Anyway, Ramona goes around repeating lines from commercials, one of which insults her teacher (Mrs. Rogers, your pantyhose are wrinkled like an elephant’s legs) and generally being weird but adorable, just like I was (at least that’s what I’m telling myself).

Mr. Quimby comes to school for the parent-teacher conference, and I remember those, but I never worried about them because I was a goody two shoes. Ramona is left outside with a world of possibilities, so of course she makes a beeline for the burdock plants, which are shedding their burs. She hooks all the burs together and crowns herself with them, and thinks she looks like a kid in one of the commercials that gets crowned. She’s all excited, and heads off to meet her dad, who is mighty impressed with her fancy crown.

When they get home, the bur crown won’t come off Ramona’s head, and so her dad has to start cutting them out. Her mom and sister come home and laugh at her. Poor Ramona. She’s afraid someone will guess why she crowned herself, and is now a little embarrassed about her commercial star aspirations. She and Mr. Quimby go into the living room to watch TV while he cuts the burs out of her hair, and Ramona, not doing a good job of hiding her bur-crown-making motives, says she wishes she could earn a million dollars like the kids in the commercials. Mr. Quimby, who seems to have guessed what’s going on, says that he wouldn’t trade her for a million dollars, and Ramona feels better. Aw.

Anyway, now it’s October, and Mr. Quimby still doesn’t have a job. Picky-picky, the cat, is living up to his name and refusing to eat the cheapo cat food he’s served (more foreshadowing), and the family eats lots of leftovers and everyone’s in a bad mood. Seriously though, Quimbys, we’re in a recession. If that’s as bad as it gets, consider yourself lucky. At least your house hasn’t been foreclosed. Anywhoo, Howie’s grandmother has brought enough pumpkins for the whole neighborhood, and Ramona goes down into the basement to get theirs. It’s huge! They’re really excited and carve up the pumpkin, and for once, everyone is happy. They give the pumpkin a huge, scary face, and they love it. Whoot.

Late that night, Ramona hears a noise in the kitchen and gets scared, because she thinks the pumpkin is coming to get her. I used to have this picture of a clown in my playroom, and I loved it during the day, but at night when the fans would come on it would blow around and make noise, and I was terrified that it would come into my room and get me. I was also afraid of roaches, spiders, snakes, mayonnaise, and this guy Pete that lived down the street from me and turned out to be a huge pothead. But anyway. She makes her parents go into the kitchen to make sure the pumpkin isn’t coming to eat her, and as it turns out – Picky-picky has been eating the pumpkin! Damn that cheap cat food! Ramona is distraught, and her mom starts cutting up the pieces of pumpkin that weren’t eaten by the cat. Beezus gets all mad and says it’s her dad’s fault for buying Picky-picky cheap cat food. When he says they can’t afford the expensive cat food she asks why they can afford for him to smoke which, good point. Beezus tells her dad that cigarettes can kill him. “Your lungs will turn black and you’ll die!” And besides they pollute the air. This, of course, keeps Ramona awake all night worrying that her dad will drop dead at any minute. This leads to my favorite plotline ever in a Ramona Quimby book:

Beezus and Ramona Campaign to Make Their Dad Stop Smoking!!!!!!!

This is near and dear to my heart, because my sister and I stole all of their ideas to try to make our parents stop smoking! And it totally worked! Whoot!

Beezus and Ramona start making No Smoking signs and leaving them around the house. Their dad ignores them, but they don’t give up. They’re running out of big pieces of paper, so they start making signs on smaller scraps of paper. They leave them in his bathrobe pocket (me too!!) around his toothbrush handle (yep, did that!), inside his shoes (that got me in lots of trouble – my mom thought it was a bug!) and pretty much everywhere they know he’ll look. Finally, they take all of his cigarettes out of the pack and roll up little signs to replace them with. Ramona gets in trouble (not Beezus, who doesn’t take any of the blame because she’s a total wimp) and Ramona quits her campaign.

One day Ramona comes home from school and her dad isn’t there. The doors are locked and she can’t get in the house. She has to sit on the back steps in the rain, and she’s really upset because she thinks her dad doesn’t love her anymore because of the no smoking campaign. Finally her father comes back and explains that he was getting his unemployment check and the line was really long. Um, Mr. Quimby? If you’d gone in the morning instead of sitting on your ass smoking, watching TV and not applying for new jobs, maybe you would have been home on time. Just saying. But Ramona is OK with it and they go inside, where Mr. Quimby pulls out a pack of cigarettes and then… doesn’t light one! Instead he asks what she’d like to do, and they finally decide to draw THE WORLD’S LONGEST PICTURE on a roll of shelf paper. They draw the state of Oregan and talk. Ramona’s father says that he will try to quit smoking, but that even if he does, Picky-picky will still have to eat Puss-puddy, the cheapo cat food. YAY! It worked! And since Beezus clammed up and let you get in trouble, you get all the credit, Ramona!

OK, remember at the beginning of the book when Beezus was whining about having to do creative writing? Well now it turns out that all she has to do is interview an old person. Mrs. Swink, their neighbor, is really old, so Ramona suggests her, and despite the fact that she wear polyester pant suits, Beezus agrees that this is a good idea. During the interview, she brings up making tin-can stilts and calling other kids ‘Pieface’ and this is all it takes to have Ramona off and running. She goes and tells Howie (remember, he lives in her neighborhood and took one of the wheels off of her trike in the first book?) because he’s good at making things.

Howie makes the stilts out of coffee cans, and makes a pair out of tuna cans for his little sister, Willa Jean. Howie and Ramona clank around the neighborhood on their tin can stilts calling people Pieface and singing ‘99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall’ which was a favorite of mine in second grade, too. She and Howie set a goal to get all the way to one bottle of beer, and the next day they accomplish it, but she is late getting home for dinner. Her family’s ill tempers and reprimands can’t rain on her parade though, and as she clonks off to the kitchen to set the table she begins the song again. That’s the spirit, Ramona!

One day in Sunday school, their teacher starts talking about the Christmas pageant, and apparently they all have Sunday school together, because Ramona is their to hear Beezus and Henry Huggins get assigned the parts of Mary and Joseph. We had Sunday school separated by grades, but I did still go to my sister’s class sometimes because I idolized her. Ramona doesn’t want to be an angel walking in with the rest of the kindergarden-5th graders, so she says she wants to be a sheep. This means that her mother, who is very busy with her full-time job, will have to make her a sheep costume, but Ramona has faith in her mom. Her mom, however, does not think this would be possible, which, really? My mom worked full time and she still made us dresses and costumes and all kinds of other stuff. My mom must be Supermom.

Between this and the pageant things are kind of boring, but Ramona does catch her father smoking and get totes jealous of Howie’s sheep costume, which his grandmother is making. Also, her shoes are getting too small, but she doesn’t tell anybody, because she’s afraid if she does she won’t get her sheep costume. Aw. Oh, and Ramona’s father gets a job! He’ll be working as a checker in a grocery store. Way to go!

Anyways, on the way to the pageant, Ramona is all pissed because her sheep costume consists of faded pink pajamas, a sheep hat, and white socks on her feet. Yeah, that pretty much sucks. She says she won’t be in the pageant, and her parents are kind of mean about it. She goes into the room where everyone is getting ready and hides behind the Christmas tree. She’s really bitter because Howie and Davy, the other sheep, have great costumes and are having a good time. Beezus, in her Mary costume, comes over and tries to coax her out, but Ramona ain’t having it. She kind of wants to go out there and play with Howie and Davy, but now that she’s told her parents she won’t be in the pageant she feels like she can’t back down. Way to have a spine, Ramona. Finally, three big girls who are putting on robes see her, and talk about how cute she is. It turns out that they are being the Three Wise Persons, since the boys are all too pansy-assed to be the Three Wise Men. The big girls are putting on makeup, and one of them puts some mascara on Ramona’s nose to make her feel more like a sheep. Ramona is totes excited, and Howie and Davy are totes jealous, so they get mascara noses too. Posers. They all go up and have the pageant, and everything is great, until Ramona worries that her parents won’t know who she is because of her black nose. Ramona, this is starting to turn into a pattern. Last time you were worried that no one would recognize you because of your witch mask. Seriously, girl, calm your anxiety. However, Ramona sees her father looking at her and smiling, and she realizes that he knows it’s her. Ramona is finally happy and we have:

The end.