Derek Wilson
Mrs. Engstrom's class
Marshall Middle School
August 27, 2009
What I did on my summer vacation
I worked. Honest.
My friend Cody Debbs and me, we went into business together as
the Cody & Me Lawnmowing Company. Cody got his name listed first because he has this old riding lawnmower, a Snapper.
For my part, I talked my dad into loaning me $18 so I could buy a weed whacker and a shrub trimmer at a yard sale, and we
scrounged a trailer and rode up and down the sidewalks getting jobs, Cody driving the lawnmower and me in the trailer holding
up a sign: WE CUT GRASS, HIRE US.
We did gud word and I guess cheap enough, so we were almost busy all
the time. And we wud have made a lot of money---a lot for a couple of 7th graders (well, we're 8th graders now)---if we hadn't
mowed Mrs. Carlson's yard. Nobody told us she's a nudy. Cody's mowing the backyard and I'm trimming her hedge and she comes
outside with nothing on to lay on a lounge chair in the sun and I kinda lost control, looking around so much, cut this big
dip in her hedge and deheaded all her rose bushes, and Cody, he's looking too and runs into Mrs. Carlson's birdbath and it
falls through her bay windown and her cat in the house escapes---lost its tail as it ran past me. All the noise and yelling
and the cat squawling, a neighbor must have called the police, and worst, I had to explain it to my dad, why I needed $763
so Cody and me wouldn't have to go to jail.
