In December, a new Diary of a Wimpy Kid film hits Disney+. Written by series creator Jeff Kinney, the film is an animated adaptation of the very first Wimpy Kid book, released in 2007. Anyone who grew up reading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series or watched the original live-action film will remember one part of the story that launched a thousand memes and stuck inside the minds of kids everywhere: the cheese touch. In the story, main character Greg Heffley, not long after starting middle school, hears a schoolyard horror story about "the cheese," a years-old piece of swiss cheese that's been baking on the school blacktop. Any poor kid who touches it is burdened with the "cheese touch," and ostracized by their schoolmates.

In a press conference attended by CBR and other outlets, series creator Jeff Kinney, who also wrote the script for the new film, explained the real-world origins of the infamous cheese touch. As it turns out, Greg's cheesy trauma hit a bit close to home for the writer.

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"The cheese was a real thing in my life," Kinney explained. "I used to go to a church where there was a piece of cheese on the parking lot underneath the basketball hoop, just like in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. And the kids who went to that school -- I didn't go to the school, but I knew some people who [did] -- they avoided the cheese just like the kids in Diary of a Wimpy Kid did."

Aside from the cheese, there's another infamous part of Wimpy Kid that's surprisingly rooted in reality, and ties into the origins of the series itself. In a scene from the book and film, Greg's best friend Rowley gets a comic strip into the school paper. The strip is a hit, despite every punchline being the same: "zoo-wee-mama!"

As Kinney explained, Rowley's strip was actually his own. "I was in college," he admitted. "I had a long run with my comic strip, and then a friend of mine and I were walking, his name's Tom Madigan. We were walking along, and I was like, 'I'd really like to get back into the paper, but I don't want to have to put in any work.' So, we came up with this idea of 'zoo-wee-mama,' which is the punchline to every strip. [The idea was], if we did this, we wouldn't have to actually create any work for ourselves because the punchline is always written...Unfortunately, 'zoo-wee-mama' didn't get published in the newspaper at the University of Maryland. But it did get published in, of course, Greg's journal."

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Jeff Kinney's interest in newspaper comics is much more foundational to Wimpy Kid than just being the inspiration for Rowley's infamous catchphrase. Kinney's struggles to become a newspaper cartoonist actually led to the series as fans know it today, by way of inspiring him to keep a journal.

"I didn't keep [a diary] when I was younger," Kinney said. "I started keeping one when I was in my mid-20s. This was when I was really frustrated... I wanted to become a newspaper cartoonist, but I was playing lots and lots of video games instead. So, I kept a journal to kind of shame myself into working on my comics. What I did was I created this journal with text and then some cartoon illustrations all throughout. I did it for years. Finally, I realized, 'Oh my gosh, this is the answer. This is what I've been looking for. The new format.' My real-life journal actually inspired Diary of a Wimpy Kid."

Diary of a Wimpy Kid has been going strong for nearly a decade and a half, with no signs of slowing down. And it's easy to see why -- Greg Heffley's life story is one that easily resonates, especially considering that its more meme-y aspects, like the cheese touch and "zoo-wee-mama," come from real places of lived experience and lighthearted reflection. It's something that even the youngest or most uninterested reader can pick up on and appreciate -- even if they've never had an ordeal with blacktop swiss themselves.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2021) is now available to stream on Disney+.

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