Dumbness is a Dish Best Served Cold (Dear Dumb Diary: Deluxe)

by Jim Benton

  we kept up that Gigantic Yearly Lie until we all

  just ran out of the energy to maintain it.

  So I figured that’s how it would go with the

  HEALTH-O-PLATES. I’d lie for a little longer,

  Angeline would eventually run out of energy, and the

  entire issue would just fade away, like the Easter

  Bunny.

  But it didn’t fade away.

  It got worse.

  And it served as a great example of why people

  should never talk to people.

  One day, I walked into the school and found

  myself strolling down the hallway that passes in front

  of the school office. I realized, once it was too late

  to turn around, that Angeline, Aunt Carol, and Uncle

  Dan were standing there talking, which, you’ll

  remember I pointed out earlier, is a bad thing for

  people to do.

  I knew they were going to ask me about the

  plates. There was no way they weren’t.

  There was only one logical thing to do.

  I turned around and quickly smashed my math

  book up into my face. Nobody would question me if I

  had a bloody nose. I’d have to go take care of it

  —

  right?

  Turns out that noses don’t always bleed that

  easily. So now my whole face hurt, my nose wasn’t

  bleeding, and I still had to walk past them.

  Angeline waved like crazy and pranced like a

  pretty little goat.

  “Hi, everybody,” I said, and kept walking. I tried

  to look like one of those celebrities who had committed

  a recent crime and was trying to get past the

  reporters to her limousine.

  “Running late,” I added, rubbing my nose, which

  hurt for the rest of the day.

  I only got away briefly. Later on, at lunch,

  Angeline was waiting to pounce.

  “Did your dad talk to his friend yet?” she asked.

  “Angeline,” I began, surprised at how nasal my

  voice sounded from the book slamming, “we might not

  be able to totally depend on this, you know.”

  “I don’t want to get into it,” she said. “But I kind

  of

  have to depend on this. And when it becomes a

  huge success, it’s going to be that much better

  because we did it together. Best friends, together.”

  Isabella’s expression was unchanged, but I’m

  sure I heard a tiny, cruel laugh escape her lips. It was

  so small and so quiet that maybe I was the only one

  who could hear it. It was the kind of laugh that only a

  friend can hear:

  silent but friendly

  .

  “Together,” I repeated, and I tried my

  hardest to use my mind to make my nose bleed so I

  could leave the table. Then I tried making Angeline’s

  nose bleed.

  I noticed that Dicky’s nose bled a little, and I

  wondered if my mind had accidentally gone up his

  nose, but I then I remembered that his nose always

  bleeds when he drinks milk, which he’s not supposed to

  do and which he does daily.

  My nose is just way too tough.

  By the time I got home, I realized that something

  had to change. While we were eating dinner, I turned to

  my dad for help.

  “Dad, somebody called for you. Her name was

  Kirsten Hall. She said it was something about plates,”

  I said.

  “Plates? Where was she from?”

  Mom got excited.

  “I can’t believe you remembered that I

  wanted new plates for our anniversary!” she said,

  throwing her arms around him. “You’re the best.”

  This was not what I had planned. I just wanted to

  put the fake name in Dad’s head and tell him that

  it had something to do with him and plates. That

  way, later I could get him to nod or something when

  I was explaining to Angeline that the deal wasn’t

  going through.

  “Oh, right, plates,” he would say, distracted by

  the TV. “Yeah. Something something plates.”

  This would be enough to convince Angeline that I

  had been telling the truth

  —

  she’s too polite to

  question him for details.

  But I wasn’t prepared for Mom’s reaction.

  She assumed Dad was buying new table settings.

  And if I was underprepared for Mom’s reaction,

  Dad’s was even harder to anticipate.

  Without hesitation, he turned to me and said,

  “Well, Jamie. You’ve kind of ruined the surprise, but

  yes, I was talking to that woman about getting Mom

  new plates for our anniversary.”

  I was shocked, disgusted, and a little

  impressed. Dad had pulled off a huge lie with

  practically

  no effort.

  “Did you get her number?” he asked.

  “She said you had it,” I said.

  “Oh, right. Of course,” Dad said, even smoother.

  “What’s her accent?” I asked, just to check the

  level of smoothness here.

  “German,” he responded easily.

  He was so smooth I could have ice-skated

  down his back.

  I nodded at him slowly and took a bite of my

  salad. I wondered how deep we were going into this lie.

  Just then, Stinker lay in the corner and farted, which

  was perhaps the only sincere and genuine thing

  expelled into the room that evening.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The worst thing she’s ever done

  They say the secret of martial arts is

  anticipating what your opponent will do before

  they do it.

  And having nunchucks to hit them with (or are

  they

  numchucks?). You know, those little poles

  connected with a chain. You might wonder why those

  are better than just hitting your opponent with a full-

  sized baseball bat. It’s because your opponent is

  probably thinking that you’re doing some kind of little

  performance for him with your special sticks, so you

  guys are kind of friends now, and then you

  SUDDENLY hit him in the face and he’s badly hurt

  —

  especially his feelings.

  Actually, probably especially his face.

  Either way, he was unprepared.

  Anyway, Aunt Carol came over after dinner to

  borrow something of my mom’s. Out of NOWHERE,

  she nunchucks me in the face with her words by saying

  the following to my dad, who is on the couch

  concentrating on a TV commercial.

  “Hey, I heard about your friend and the plates.

  Pretty exciting,” she says, obviously because Angeline

  had shared my lie with her.

  My dad turns to her and makes this face like

  Aunt Carol had just said how much she likes the smell

  of

  wet cats.

  “Yeah,” he said slowly, and then looked at me,

  confused.

  I shrugged.

  “People love plates,” I said to him. “What are

  you gonna do?”

  It was good to know how marvelous I was at lying

  and how good my dad was at it, too. What a great

  idea it was to lie, I thought.

&n
bsp; Just lie all the time.

  Lie, lie, lie.

  I had to eat Fibergrunt Flakes the next

  morning, and as I sat there gnawing them into a gray

  paste smooth enough to swallow, I thought about how

  much better the world would be if we all lied.

  Like, if I worked at the factory where they made

  Fibergrunt Flakes, when nobody was looking, I would

  just dump a huge bag of sugar into the big cauldron

  where they were stirring it all up.

  “Jamie, did you add sugar to this?” some sad

  cereal maker would ask me as he tasted it and found it

  suddenly

  not as sickening.

  “ Nope,” I would say. “It’s just good now. It just

  tastes good now for some unknown reason that nobody

  knows. It just does. Just roll with it.”

  And he’d be satisfied with that, and the people

  who bought it and ate it would finally be happy, and

  what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with

  being happy?

  I know that people say it’s wrong to add things

  to people’s food and not tell them. But guess what

  —

  I actually talked to the people that say

  that, and we had a long conversation about it, and

  now they say it’s fine. They said that they were wrong,

  and it’s fine now.

  See? Another lie. I just lied, and it sounded great.

  Works every time.

  And I was going to need the lies to work like

  that again.

  Like, the next day.

  I didn’t know much about Angeline’s young

  childhood. But it’s a known fact that the school has a

  PERMANENT RECORD of everybody, and all your

  bad grades and terrible deeds and events of your

  childhood are recorded in it forever. Once, I had brief

  access to Angeline’s permanent record, but I never

  read it. Later, she told me that there were terrible

  things in there that could have destroyed her, and I felt

  a deep sense of pride for not invading her privacy, and

  even

  deeper regret for not having a copy of those

  things to stick up her nose later.

  Not knowing what was in there nearly drove

  Isabella insane, and in a carefully planned scheme in

  which she got herself sent to the assistant principal’s

  office (Uncle Dan) at the exact time a bee flew into

  his office (he’s allergic to bees, she learned), she

  managed to quickly pull open a file drawer and shoot a

  single photo of one thing in Angeline’s PERMANENT

  RECORD before he managed to return to his office

  with Aunt Carol to kill the bee for him.

  It wasn’t actually a bee anyway. It was a fly that

  she had secretly released from a jar. I talked Isabella

  into using a fly because a bee could make him really

  sick, but mostly because it would be more

  hilariously embarrassing when Aunt Carol

  discovered that he had almost cried about a fly.

  Later, when we looked at the photo of Angeline’s

  record, we could see just the top of one report that

  said something about hitting and, in front of that, the

  full page of one about SOMETHING AWFUL. We

  were

  thrilled

  shocked to discover that it was for

  stealing, but our spirits fell as we read deeper.

  Angeline had stolen some mints off a teacher’s

  desk. Just a little pack of mints. It’s still stealing, of

  course, but

  .

  .

  .

  It was second grade. She had learned about the

  people who work at the sewage treatment plant that

  have to purify all our wastewater. She was so concerned

  about the smell that they had to put up with that she

  started flushing the mints down the toilet, one at a

  time, in an effort to improve things at the sewage

  treatment facility miles away.

  This was just so, so,

  SO

  sickeningly adorable,

  that when Angeline’s mom told the people at the

  facility about it, they presented Angeline with the title

  of

  Water Princess, and she was on the news.

  The only reason it was in her permanent record

  at all was because, technically, there was a theft, and

  the school has to record everything like that, even the

  cutest crime of the century.

  See? Angeline really does genuinely care about

  people. Gross, right?

  I’ve always felt that Angeline has it all. I mean,

  she has skin like a Barbie, hair like a Barbie, and

  eyelashes like, I don’t know, a Barbie, I guess.

  People absolutely love her on sight, and to make

  things worse, she’s not just a pretty face. She’s

  actually a very kind human being. Very kind. Terribly,

  terribly kind.

  KIND. KIND. KIND.

  Which is why I kind of hate her sometimes.

  But beauty fades. It just doesn’t last forever,

  and incredibly, there are actually people in the world

  who are JEALOUS of people with hair like golden silk

  and a voice like a silver flute and lips that evidently

  naturally salivate their own gloss. Extreme

  attractiveness can work against these people.

  This is why I have always strived for just the right

  amount of attractiveness.

  Anyway, Angeline, like so many of us, will have to

  learn to do something for a living one day.

  I always thought she could be a supermodel, but

  Angeline doesn’t like being thought of as just pretty.

  She always wants to do something

  —

  to accomplish

  something. Just being beautiful isn’t enough for her.

  It’s probably the one thing about her that’s just like me.

  Why do they call them SUPER models anyway?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The cow was down with it

  “We won’t have to look at these much longer,”

  Mom chirped as she brought our dinner in from the

  kitchen and set the plates down in front of us.

  “That’s a relief,” Dad said. “

  Ugliest

  meatballs I’ve ever seen.” He chuckled and looked

  over at me. “I’m glad she said it, and not me.”

  I laughed a little, too, mostly because these

  weren’t even close to the ugliest meatballs Mom had

  ever made. Once, she made some with holes poked

  through the middle. She thought they looked like

  adorable little donuts, but the hole just looked like

  the

  screaming mouth of a meatball shrieking in

  horror at what it had become.

  “I was talking about the plates,” Mom said flatly.

  Dad was chewing absently until he caught Mom’s

  scowling stare.

  “I meant the

  PLATES,” she repeated. “We won’t

  have to look at these plates much longer.”

  If you’ve ever sat with a large, quiet cow and

  described the different planets in our solar system,

  and how they all revolve around the sun, and how the

  sun is really just a star, you have a very good idea

  of what my dad looked like in that moment.

 
“Because you’re getting her new plates,” I

  said, nudging his large cow shoulder.

  “New. Plates,” the large, quiet cow repeated

  dim-wittedly.

  “For your anniversary,” I prompted.

  “OH!” he said, really big like that. “Right.

  From Kathleen.”

  “Kirsten,” I reminded him.

  “Kirsten. Yup. The plates. Yup. I am. Yup.”

  I suddenly had the impression that this whole

  plate thing may have actually been Dad’s very first

  attempt at lying. I simultaneously realized that I had

  said the word “

  PLATES” more in the last few days

  than ever before in my life.

  The thought of saying “plates” and talking

  about plates and thinking about plates suddenly

  enraged me. I felt the anger rising up from my guts. I

  heard my teeth grind, and I felt my face turn hot

  —

  hot

  enough to warm a small lunch item.

  There are only so many times in a week that you

  can think about plates. There are only so many times

  you can say the word “

  PLATES.”

  Thunder cracked.

  Somewhere, I mean. Probably. But if it had

  happened at my house right then, that would have

  been really perfect.

  My fists came down on the table with a crash,

  and a meatball tumbled off the table and landed

  directly in between Stinker and Stinkette.

  Amazingly, Stinker didn’t try to eat it, so

  Stinkette

  gobbled it up in one piggish bite.

  Mom and Dad stared at me. They didn’t look

  angry. They looked more amazed that this THING was

  living in their house, pounding their table and

  launching their meatballs.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, which was strange because

  I’m usually not sorry about things, but this time I really

  might have been.

  “Angeline is making us nuts with these paper

  plates of hers, and I know it’s because she’s really

  concerned about money and her future, but honestly,

  I don’t think I ever want to hear about plates again. I

  think maybe I hate plates now.”