Totally Joe Read Online Free PDF

folding clothes and grumbling about the mess. If we were a sitcom family, it would be my mom carrying on like that, talking about having to live with a house full of men! But my mom can be the biggest slob. Honestly. I mean, she’s super nice, but she just doesn’t care about things like dirtydishes or papers piling up on the dining-room table. Her motto is “Life is short and there will always be dirty dishes, so let’s dance.”
    Did I mention my mother is funny, too? Her name is Penny. What’s weird is that she has this copper-colored hair, which she swears no one knew she would have when they named her (she’s the only one in her family with penny-colored hair). My dad says he fell in love with my mom because of her name and her hair, but I doubt he’s that shallow. (I pride myself on being the truly shallow member of the family. Remember, I fell in love with feathery blond hair and a head shaped like a melon.)
    My mom teaches second grade in a school a couple of towns away. I’ll bet she’s a really good teacher, even if she gets in trouble sometimes for having a messy room. (I hope she doesn’t tell her kids her motto.) Half the time our kitchen table is piled up with her classroom projects. And she’s always talking about her students like they’re part of the family.
    I never really thought about this before, but both my parents have jobs where they work with kids, and they’re both always talking about how terrific “their” kids are-even my dad’s “troubled teens,” who he says only need love and direction—and, well, the part I never thoughtabout before is this: Why do I keep worrying that they won’t love me as much once they know “the truth” about me? They love everybody.
    Aunt Pam says that a kid like me couldn’t have better parents.
    Oh, I have to tell you about Aunt Pam. She’s my mom’s younger sister—a lot younger. When I tell people that my aunt lives with us, they probably picture this old lady with her hair up in a bun who sits around all day chain-smoking and knitting baby booties for the starving children of Armenia.But Aunt Pam is not like that at all. She is twenty-eight years old, and I think it is fair to say that if a vote were taken tomorrow, she would win the title of Most Beautiful Woman in All of Paintbrush Falls and Maybe Even All of Upstate New York. If Julia Roberts were her sister, Julia would be whining all the time, “Why can’t I look like Pam? It’s not fair!” I am
so
not kidding.
    Aunt Pam is an artist. When she moved in with us a couple of years ago, my dad helped her turn the upstairs room over our garage into a studio. She makes these really big paintings that she says are abstract and all about feelings. I don’t know about that. I know I likethem, but maybe that’s because I totally love Aunt Pam.
    It’s hard not to love somebody who is always on your side. When I was going through such a tough time in fifth grade, it was Aunt Pam who helped me know I’d be okay. I told her everything—even more than I told Bobby. And do you know what she would do? She’d sit there and nod her head and say, “That’s cool.” Like nothing I told her was a big deal! Then when I would finish, she would say, “You’re good just the way you are, Joe. Life isn’t always going to be easy—it isn’t for anybody—but you’ve got the stuff and you’re going to be so fine you’ll shine.” We’d laugh when she’d say that. It was so corny, that “so fine you’ll shine” thing. But it really helped. It still does.
    I guess I could believe anything Aunt Pam told me, because I knew she’d been through tough times herself. She moved in with us after living in New York City for a few years. It wasn’t that she wanted to move to a small town, she just needed somebody to take care of her