The 7th graders are terrorized by the approaching of ""Scrub Day,"" the day when the upperclassmen are supposedly allowed to do terrible things to them. Louis is desperate to find a way out of it, but Ren and Donnie offer him no help. Louis organizes the ""United Scrubs of America"" to stand up to Larry Beale, their chief tormenter. Larry thwarts them by saying that this year they will only concentrate on one scrub--Louis. Louis turns around to find that all his supporters have deserted him. On Scrub Day the patrol is out in full force seeking Louis, but he proves to be elusive for them. Finally they catch him, when who should show up but big brother Donnie. But instead of rescuing Louis, Donnie arrives dressed like Gandhi! (He's appearing in the Living History Pageant.) Donnie has taken Gandhi's philosophy to heart and advises Louis not to fight back, then he gets a page and leaves. Beale and company take their prisoner to the cafeteria where they dump him in a vat of sloppy joe. Remember

Ren is surprised by Louis, who she finds in her closet looking for Hanukkah presents. In the process he messes up her room and breaks Donnie's trophy's trying to run away from her. Keeping up his search, Louis finds the presents in the basement. Upstairs, Ren asks her mom to tell the Hanukkah story again (Eileen's side of the family is Jewish.) Louis hears his dad coming upstairs to get him, so he hastily wraps the presents in a blanket and dangles them outside his window. The presents all go crashing to the driveway. When the family sees what happens, Louis is in trouble with them all. Feeling sorry for himself later, Louis wishes out loud that he hadn't been born into this family where he doesn't fit in.

Suddenly in great flashes of light an old woman appears to Louis. It's the spirit of his great-great-great-great grandmother Bubbie Rose. She's heard Louis complaining and is ready to take him on a trip to see what would have happened if he hadn't been born. They travel to the Steven

Louis and Twitty are desperate to find the new ultra-cool ""Quasi"" sneakers, but they are sold out everywhere. Tom puts them in contact with his underground source, though, and they set up a meeting with ""Scabbie"" at South Creek Mall. Meanwhile, Ren is leading (naturally) a fund-raising meeting for the school paper. Ruby proposes a fashion show at the Mall, an idea everyone likes better than Ren's, including, surprisingly, Ren's devoted disciples Carla and Marla. Soon everyone is neglecting work on the paper and working on the fashion show. Ren gets upset and Ruby accuses her of being mad because the show wasn't her idea, which seems to be true. Ren angrily insists she'll put out the paper by herself.

Louis and Twitty take a scary trip through the mall basement and meet up with the even scarier character of Scabbie. He takes their money and goes to his ""secret stash"" of Quasis. When the boys realize that he didn't get their shoes sizes, they quickly determine he's not coming back. Meanw

State Sen. Eileen Stevens is running for secretary of state, and she hires a political consultant to help with the campaign. He sits the family down to have a serious talk about image when Louis comes bursting in the room, with vegetables growing in his hair for a science project! The consultant is appalled by Louis. Eileen plans to announce her candidacy on a news broadcast, and the consultant dresses Louis in a suit with short pants for the event. Louis flies into a rage over wearing the outfit, and it's all caught on tape by reporter Cynthia Mills. Soon the tape of Louis having a fit is being shown on every channel and Cynthia had dubbed him ""the wild child.""

At school Larry Beale takes delight in needling Ren about her brother's actions. Nelson comes to her defense and gets stuffed in a locker. Later he goes to Donnie for some self-defense instruction. Donnie makes up a martial art using the pinky fingers called ""ta-ting"" which is totally phony but which gives Nelson confidence. Ei

Dad's bought a new car, but he disappoints the family by buying a boring minivan. But who should come rolling up in a monster 4-wheel drive truck but Chuck Stevens, Steve's brother and the favorite uncle of Louis. Dad isn't too thrilled about his brother's visit because he's an immature ne'er-do-well with lots of half-baked get-rich-quick schemes that never work out, and also a bad influence on Louis. When his parents stop Louis from pulling a prank on Larry Beale at school, Uncle Chuck encourages him to do it anyway. While Louis is washing the van, Chuck tells him to forget about it and come to the mall with him. The guys leave the hose running and fill the van with water. Louis tries to takes all the blame on himself.

Louis is grounded, but Uncle Chuck sneaks him out at night and takes him and Twitty to Larry's house to TP (toilet paper) the yard. When Larry and his ferocious dad Colonel Beale come after them, Uncle Chuck takes off in the truck, abandoning the boys. Luckily Steve Ste

Ren is excited to get a job at the coolest shop in the mall's food court. It's a place called Your Toast, where they serve up toast all different ways and put on a show while doing it. The only problem is the ""wormy"" assitant manager Mr. Squirelli, who runs the place like a dictator. But Squirelli likes the way Ren works, and after she runs off a troublemaking customer--her bother Louis--he promotes her to assistant assitant manager, a job Ruby was in line for. Later the manager finds that someone broke one of the ""Ten Commandments of Toast"" when he finds a half-eaten piece behind the counter. He interrogates Ren while trying to find out who did it, but she won't tell on Ruby. Squirelli fires Ruby anyway, though. Ruby blames Ren for her losing her job, and co-workers Hector and Denise do, too.

One day when Squirelli is gone from the store, Hector and Denise see Ruby shoping at the mall and go to talk to her, leaving Ren alone with tons of customers. Larry Beale sees that Ren is in trou

Louis, Twitty and Tom are engaging in one of their usual crazy pursuits (this time trying to walk on the ceiling!) when they find that Beans has once again snuck into the house and is annoying them. Beans says he has a cousin named Chris that the guys might like to meet, but they throw him out anyway, only to find out that not only is Chris a girl, she's a pretty one, too! Now all of a sudden Louis and his friends are fawning all over Beans, hoping that he will introduce them to his cousin. Beans puts them through a test and decides he'll let Louis meet her. Louis arranges to take a gondola ride with Chris, but she shows up with Beans in tow. Louis manages to ditch Beans, and on the gondola ride sparks start to fly between him and Chris. She gives him permission to kiss her, but when Louis starts to move in on her, Chris' head morphs into a replica of--Beans!! Louis screams in horror!

At school Twitty and Tom want to know all the juicy details about Louis' date, but Louis is still trau

In Mr. Lopez's algebra class, Tawny and Twitty are doing great, but Louis is pretty much clueless. Despite his teacher's warning about the upcoming mid-term, Louis shows no concern about learning the material. Instead he spends his time with Beans working on some strange device. We soon learn what its purpose is: it's a snow machine, and Louis takes it to Principal Wexler's house to try and fool him by faking a blizzard so he will cancel classes on the day of the algebra exam. The ruse almost works until Ren comes along and blows Louis' cover. In a meeting with Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, Wexler comes down hard on Louis, suspending him for a week.

Eileen Stevens takes the job of tutoring her son while he's out of school and she puts him through a tough course of learning. But Louis still gets nowhere with the algebra. Ren confronts Louis and asks why he went to such trouble to get out of a test. Louis admits that he just doesn't understand anything about algebra but is embarrassed to admit t

At school, Louis and Tom are fooling around with Tom's boomerang when Louis flings it in the direction of Ren, Ruby and Monique, nearly hitting them. The group looks for the lost boomerang, but instead of finding it Ren stumbles upon something else. a metal briefcase, the kind used to carry large sums of cash! When the gang gets home, they open it up and check it out. Amazingly, they find that it IS full of money--$4,412 to be exact! Everyone starts mentally dividing up the loot and deciding how they are going to spend it--except for Ren, of course. Though the others are reluctant, they finally listen to Ren when she tells them the money is not theirs and must be turned over to the proper authorities. They all agree that Ren, being the most responsible one, should take the money to the police.

But on the way to the station, Ren sees a pair of lizard-skin pants in the window of an expensive botique. She stops in to look, and the saleswoman there does quite a sales job on her, so much so