Karl Shoemaker Timeline and Summary

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• Karl grows up with his father, the mayor of Lightsburg, and his mom, a secretary.
• In third grade, Karl gets in trouble with his dad by suggesting Lightsburg become a Communist state.
• Fourth grade lands Karl in group therapy for the first time when he starts crying during story hour because he finds stories to be too intense.
• Karl's father is diagnosed with lung cancer.
• In his dad's final months, he quits drinking and teaches Karl how to run the house in his absence.
• Karl beats up Al, the quarterback of the football team, after being bullied at school.
• Karl kills Squid's rabbit and is subsequently labeled "Psycho" by his classmates.
• Karl's dad dies.
• Several months after his dad's death, Karl's mom throws a party with her crazy friends to talk about the protest at Kent State, which marks the beginning of her money-stealing, drinking, and obsession with cats. Karl gets drunk with his mom and her friends.
• After four years of dealing with his mom and the Madmen, Karl decides to try to be normal his senior year.
• While an integral part of his plan is avoiding his best friend, Paul, Karl quickly realizes that Paul isn't speaking to him.
• Karl meets Marti, the new girl and latest addition to the Madman Underground; he agrees to accompany her to the first-day-of-school dance that night.
• At Philbin's, the local drugstore and eatery, Karl is offered a job bussing tables on the weekend to help handle the crowd from the town's new movie theater.
• Tierden and Harris, the school bullies, pick on Marti and call her some unflattering names. Karl does his psycho act on them and freaks them out, and a fight almost breaks out, but Gratz steps in and stops it.
• Marti hangs out with Karl at McDonald's while he cleans. He shares his plan to be normal and Marti shames him for it, saying that she doesn't understand why he would want to abandon his friends like that.
• The next morning, Karl goes to another one of his jobs to help Browning move a couch. Browning explains to him that the only people he can really count on in life are his friends, which makes him think about what Marti said.
• In Gratz's English class, Gratz tells Karl that he's all for getting him out of therapy this year, provided that he meets with Gratz regularly to discuss his issues. He agrees to write Karl a letter explaining this deal.
• Karl helps Browning rebuild the frame of a couch and fix his toilet for $20. Later, he finds that his mom has stolen the money from his dirty clothes.
• Marti shows up at McDonald's during his night shift and says she's been locked out; the two sleep there until the morning crew shows up and she can get back in.
• On Friday morning, Karl is about to head to Gratz's class to pick up his letter when Paul confronts him at his locker. He learns that Paul has been ignoring him because he, too, is trying to be normal. Karl calls Paul a rude name in reference to his sexuality and punches him.
• In Gratz's class, Marti shakes things up by starting an argument with Gratz that leads to all of the Madmen except Karl walking out. He feels like a traitor, but doesn't want to screw up the deal with his letter.
• Karl comes home to find that his mother has met another guy—a professor at a college in Sandusky—and is going to Put-in-Bay for the weekend.
• That night, Karl does his first weekend shift at Philbin's. Cheryl and Marti meet him after work to tell him that Paul had a fight with his dad at the football game and is heading for the gay strip in Toledo.
• Even though he's technically a traitor, Karl has to go because Paul has gotten beat up doing this before, and he feels obligated to help. The whole crew goes and rescues him, then has breakfast at midnight at a Denny's on the way home.
• When Karl comes home, he finds his mom wigged out on the couch, her suitcase on the porch, and the new boyfriend nowhere to be found.
• The next day, his mom amazingly has it back together enough to cook waffles for the two of them. They eat their breakfast and watch cartoons, and everything feels pretty normal. Then, his mom finds one of her cats dead and freaks out.
• Karl goes to his AA meeting, then has lunch with his sponsor, Dick, and ends up hanging out with Darla, who confesses to him that she's heard Karl kills cats and she thinks it's hot.
• That night at work, Karl sees all of the Madmen eating together at Philbin's. He learns that Marti has decided they should all be friends in public, which further challenges his decision to accept Gratz's offer.
• Paul and Karl make up and end up talking all night at Karl's house since Karl's mom has evidently made up with her boyfriend and gone to Put-in-Bay after all.
• The next afternoon, Karl re-glazes storm windows with his mom's new boyfriend, Bill. They have a deep man-to-man discussion about Karl's decision to join the Army instead of go to college.
• Karl catches his cat taking a dump on his bed and decides to take up Darla on her offer to kill a cat and have sex.
• This plan ends up not working out because Karl grows a conscience about the whole thing, and Darla throws a tantrum and runs away naked. Wow.
• Karl comes home to find that his mom tore up the list of chores his dad left him before he died. He learns from her that her old boyfriend has spread a rumor around town that Karl is a cat-killer and that even his mom believes it.
• Concerned that his mom will lock him out after their confrontation, Karl gets a room at the local hotel. Marti ends up joining him after a fight with her parents forces her to leave.
• A cop, the hotel manager, and Marti's and Karl's parents wake them up Monday morning. They find them naked (because they chose to not sleep in their dirty clothes) and jump to conclusions.
• The conclusion-jumping leads to Karl going to the hospital to get tested for STDs. (Just a reminder—he has never had sex.)
• The events of the last few days come to a head, and Karl deliberately insults Gratz, who throws his letter in the trash and sends him to therapy.
• The Madmen unite against their new therapist, some new college graduate who doesn't have a clue.
• Gratz, Bill, and Dick find Karl after school and tell him that through a series of serendipitous meetings involving AA, they've put together what's going on with Karl's mom and his money. They set up a bank account for Karl and have Gratz cosign on it.
• That night at McDonald's, the entire Madmen group shows up and convinces Karl to fix the time clock so he can leave work early with them.