“I’m telling all of this because if I don’t, then the rest of the story makes me look like a real jerk.”

Because Jake tells the story from a later vantage point in time—as a fourth grader—he has had time to reflect on his actions and put them into perspective. He now realizes that he made some wrong choices during the third-grade science fair and that these choices contradicted his image of himself. He believes himself to be a nice person, and it is important to him that others perceive him the same way—important enough that he is adapting his storytelling to soften the reader’s judgment of his actions.

“And one thing I know for sure is this: There’s nothing worse than a know-it-all.”

Jake’s extreme claim—that there is “nothing worse” than people who act like they know everything and have to prove that they are smarter than everyone else—conveys how much he dislikes Marsha and Kevin’s behavior. Since he will soon begin acting like a know-it-all himself, this helps lay groundwork for the story’s central conflict. It also helps to establish the themes of Learning as Its Own Reward and The Value of Personal Integrity by making it clear that Jake is contradicting his own values by acting like Kevin and Marsha as he pursues the reward of the new computer instead of focusing on learning something about science.