Charming little Jessica van Plushbottom is a third-grade student at Miss Penelope Roosevelt's Academy, an exclusive private school in Beverly Hills California. She was assigned to write an essay about a poor family. She wrote:

Once upon a time there was a poor family. The father was poor, the mother was poor, and all the children were poor. The cook was poor, the maid was poor, the chauffeur was poor, the gardener was poor...