by Karen Rivers
83 I laughed so hard that I almost peed my pants, which has never, not even once happened to me from laughing. But the funnier thing (in a not actually funny way) was that when that happened, it made me think of Freddie Blue (Queen of the Pee Pants) and then right away I felt bad that I was lurking with Ruth and not FB. I felt like a bad friend, and also like RUTH was bad for taking me away from FB, and then the mood changed horribly and I ended up pretending I had a headache and going home, even though lurking was the best fun ever and I did a perfect ollie. OK, NOT a perfect ollie. But something that, from a distance, if you didn’t know better, you might have thought was an ollie-like move.
84 This is truly the best smoothie of all time. You also need some high fat, very tasty vanilla-flavored yogurt, some milk, and a large handful of ice cubes. Blend until PERFECT, as in “no ice chunks.” Enjoy!
85 Which will probably happen sometime around the first of Never, and/or when this book becomes a bestseller. That would be around the fifth of Never. Either way, sometime in the first week of Never, would be my best guess.
86 “Geni” is a perfectly excellent example of how you cannot shorten certain words without sounding like a total idio.
87 “We can’t possibly get caught” is a sentiment once uttered by every idio who is now rotting away in the prison system for the rest of time, FYI.
88 Do you ever notice how the word “blouse” is never used to describe clothing on anyone under the age of eighty? Why is that? They are “shirts” until you are seventy-nine, then poof, they grow up to be “blouses”? How does that work?
89 I don’t know if you read the book Where the Wild Things Are when you were a kid, but the way she was acting reminds me very much of a WILD RUMPUS. Watching a WILD RUMPUS is sort of embarrassing, like you feel like you should look away and yet also you know that the WILD RUMPUS is being put on for your benefit, so you are also obliged to watch.
90 Everything seemed like it was an act with her lately, and this was just like the grand finale or something. I didn’t know whether to clap or cry, really.
91 I’m not sure this was the best tactic, as it looked like mostly what she was doing was annoying and offending the police people. I’d say “policemen” but one was a woman, so that wouldn’t be entirely accurate, and I am nothing if not married to the facts.
92 I really don’t see “borsk” catching on in place of “bored.” It just doesn’t work, although I feel like I should use it just out of loyalty to FB.
93 I think this means that I won the Boyfriend Race, but I don’t want to say that out loud in case I jinx it, and actually the whole Boyfriend Race feels embarrassing and dumb and wrong now and I don’t even know what I was thinking when I thought it up. I’m sure glad I never said it out loud or wrote it in an encyclopedia or anything.
Oh, wait . . .
94 Yes, I know that everything in encyclopedias is on the Internet and in a more modern and updated way, but it’s just not the same because you can’t flip the Internet open at random and learn something fascinating about Mohism, for example.
95 If you have anything like a regular, normal name, it is very likely that more than one other person shares it. It is impossible for there to be seven billion unique names. It just is. Don’t question it! It’s true, because you read it in an encyclopedia. So there.
96 Someone who tinks. Actually, I don’t know what a tinker is, come to think of it.
97 He is not the only person in the world who believes this, just the only one in this house. Mom and Seb think he is wrong. And Lex and I do not care. Our not caring unites us more than any sport or TV show or music ever could. Oh, and we also like the same music, in case you were wondering.
98 Here is some helpful information for you: If you’re being trampled by a herd of elephants, you should play dead because an elephant will not step on someone who is lying down. Apparently they have no compunction about standing on someone who is sitting up. I don’t know whether oxen prefer to trample people who are sitting or lying down, but I don’t want to be the one to find out either. You’ll have to do your own testing, and let me know what you find out so I can update this encyclopedia with the correct information.
99 Which is beyond mysterious, not that he’d call me Freckle Peckle, which he does all the time, but that he’d say “dude,” which he has never ever said as far as I know and sounds much more like Lex. Was Lex pretending to be Seb? Do I hate Lex? Or Seb? OR BOTH?
100 Not that I have ever been in this situation before, because I haven’t, but if you’d asked me before this all happened, I would have given you the Tink Aaron-Martin Patented Stare of Outright Confusion, and then I would have said, “Why would I be waiting for someone to call me? I would call someone if I wanted to talk to them. What a dumb question.” Oh, life, you are so funny sometimes.
101 “Asynchronous” means “not in sync” or “syncing at different rates,” which basically means that you can have a conversation with someone at a different time than they are having it with you. Charlotte Ellery says that having autism is like being asynchronous while the rest of the world is in sync, so that it takes longer for Seb to figure out what is what and to respond or catch up than it would an NT. I do not know why I bring that up now. I just like the word “asynchronous” because it is a word that commands respect from your listener, being a word that they are not likely to know, such that for the rest of the conversation, they are wondering how quickly they can get to the Internet to look up what it means so they know what you are talking about.
102 Yes, of course I’m joking. Obviously freckles and Afros will be made insta-glam by our trendsetting royal family and people will be racing to their plastic surgeons to have freckles added. And Afros will be so totes pops that even FB will have one. (I can’t wait.)
103 I do not know the answer to any of these questions. These are just some of the million things that come up when Charlotte Ellery dares to whisper the words ”respite care.” Funnily enough, the only one who doesn’t get defensive and weird about the subject is Seb, who shrugs and says, “Fine by me. I could use a break from Lex, he’s a total pain in the ____.” When he says this, Lex looks so sad that I want to slap Seb for hurting his feelings, when we all know Lex does tons for Seb that Seb doesn’t really get because he doesn’t really think too much about Lex’s feelings, as I’ve mentioned. Anyway, it’s complicated. Like a pile of jumbly blocks stacked precariously on a foundation of Seb. If the jumbly blocks were “emotions” and Seb was . . . Seb.
104 I can hardly wait to write my first English assignment when I get back to school, which will no doubt be “Where I Went on My Summer Vacation.” I bet my answer is unique. MY ROOM. I’ll probably get an A, a sympathy-because-you-had-a-terrible-summer A, but still an A.
105 Zero out of ten doctors recommend a hearty serving of Oreos for breakfast!
106 It is probably very hard for you to imagine why Wex Stromson-Funk was at a school for gifted people. He was not VERY gifted. At least, not outside of math. Being good at math can get you into good schools but it does not — repeat, does NOT — make you smart in any necessarily meaningful way. JEANIE. Ha ha ha. Oh Em Gee.
107 Always look for a bathroom when you don’t know what else to do. That is a useful tip. If I wasn’t already almost through the alphabet in this encyclopedia, I would seriously consider making this an advice book, because it is full of good tips like this one. If by “full of good tips,” I mean “has one or two bits of advice that might be useful if you are ever in exactly the same situations that I have been in.”
108 Malg is glam backward, in case you have forgotten and/or are too lazy to refer back to the Ms. And it is only just now when I write it down that I realize that even the WORD “malg” is malg. I am never going to use it again. I am putting it in the casket of Freddie Blue Anderson memories that I am going to bury in the dirt and never think of or speak of again.
109 In addition to feeling entirely left out and miserable and actually sort of he
artbroken for the sad mess that my life has so quickly become.
110 Sometimes, to get what you want, you have to just ask for it. That is helpful tip #201! Or so. I haven’t been counting, but if you have, feel free to send me a letter with the correct number and you will win a prize. The prize will be this book. But you already have this book, so all in all, it might just be a waste of a stamp.
111 I do not know anyone who would fit this description either, but maybe there is someone out there who is completely perfect and never does the wrong thing. If there is, this person is probably really annoying to be around. Think about it.
112 Another Freddie Blue–ism that makes no sense whatsoever and suggests she isn’t as smart as she thinks she is. I never really noticed before how so much of what she said was just plain dumb. I think it was a case of being too close, sort of how if you are looking at someone all the time, you start to not notice what they look like, and it’s only when you go away and then come back that you really can see them properly.
113 Which I only just recently found out. Don’t tell anyone this, but before Mom told me that a faint and a swoon were the same thing, I imagined a swoon to involve a sort of swooping to the ground, like a flying squirrel on a strong draft of air. I know it doesn’t make sense, but not everything has to make sense in order for you to believe it is true. I think I’ve proven that by now, if nothing else.
114 A “conk” is a kind of fungi that grows on trees and sticks out like steps, or in some cases, like gross, protruding tree brains. Conk is also a hairstyle favored by some black men who reject their Afros, especially in the 1950s, when it was cool to do so. Now it is not cool, as the Afro is symbolic of your general Africanness, which is a conclusion I’ve recently come to.
I’ve actually decided to start loving my hair. I bet you didn’t see that coming, did you? That’s part of what separates my encyclopedia from regular old boring ones — sometimes it’s going to shock you to your CORE.
115 I say “blah blah blah” to save you from the boring details, which translate in English to, “I’m so popular! Everyone likes me! I am ____!”
116 I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but one of the things that Charlotte Ellery says all the time is that we have to stop trying to teach Seb to be more like us, and just get that he is how he is and can’t be “taught” to be us. We are ourselves, and he is himself, and he will do stuff his way, no matter how many times we tell him not to. At least, I think that’s the gist of it.
117 I missed an entire week of school, in case you are keeping track of these things.
118 It’s 12, FYI.
119 Actually, she is the only other Virgo I know, but it doesn’t sound as good to say it that way.
120 When I was about ten, Dad went through a phase where he called all of us “champ” all the time, which honestly didn’t bother me a bit. We still all call each other “champ” sometimes, as a non-funny family joke.
121 If any good came from the Tragedy at all, it was that my grounding seemed to be completely forgotten. So that was handy.
122 I had completely forgotten about Jedgar Johnston. I guess I sort of forgot that Ruth had a life that wasn’t just skateboarding with me once in a while at Drop Mac or talking on the phone a few times. But Jedgar, in case you’ve forgotten, and I can’t blame you if you did, is Ruth’s BFF. He’s cute-ish, but has a strange limp and sometimes is pretty weird. For a while, FB had him on her Crush List. I don’t know if she still does. I haven’t seen her list for ages. If you want to know, you should probably ask “Stell.”
123 I had thought it was going to be funny but then I realized that it was kind of an inside joke and I was the only one on the inside now. FB loved the shirt. She wouldn’t get it at all. And Ruth wasn’t coming, not that she would get it either. And there really wasn’t anyone else, so as it happened, I was just going to my own party in the World’s Ugliest Shirt. Dumb. Please feel free to learn from my humiliating mistakes so you don’t repeat them all in your own life, not that this one is repeatable unless you also own a puffy yellow pirate shirt. If you do, do yourself a favor and go throw it in the garbage right now. NEVER WEAR IT AGAIN!
124 This is something you see other people doing or you see on TV and it looks romantic and sweet and you think, Awwwww, how adorable. But in real life, when it happens to you, you realize that it kinks your neck horribly and causes cramps in your twisted shoulder. Not that it’s bad! Just not as sweet as it looks.
125 Molestar is my favorite Spanish verb. But my newest favorite Spanish noun is monopatín. Guess what it means? If you guess correctly, you will get ten bonus points and a shot at the big prize! If, in fact, there were points or prizes involved in reading this book, which there are not. In which case, I don’t mind telling you the answer, which is “skateboard.” Go ahead, use it and impress your friends!
126 Which proves what I was saying about how all fun occurs on weekends, regardless of the fact that a lot of the party was not fun. Possibly most of your life’s most humiliating moments will also happen on weekends, making weekends a tossed salad of ups and downs that will likely exhaust you for the entire week, so my advice would be to choose a restful profession where naps are permitted. You know, if you’re looking at the big picture.
127 I don’t know how I feel about holding hands. Mostly my hand felt very self-conscious, but I couldn’t find a way to let go and I didn’t WANT to let go. But also I did. Holding hands was almost like a kiss that went on just long enough to get uncomfortable. Which I was. A little bit. Even though I really didn’t want to be.
128 For my whole life, or at least for the last few weeks, I’ve been worrying a lot that I don’t know how to kiss and what if I get kissed and don’t know what to do? How do you know what to do? What do you do with your tongue, etc.? How do you breathe? So if you are worried about these things, I can help you. Here’s the thing: IT JUST HAPPENS AUTOMATICALLY. The key to kissing — and I’m totally an expert now that I’ve done it at least ten times — is just shutting your brain up. Don’t listen to it when it says, “Hey, what are you doing?” Just do it. And it will all work out. Promise.
129 I saw this really neat documentary once about these guys who just dive into the river and grab fish. Like with their hands. They just snatch them out of the river. But the river is HUGE, like a ROARING OCEAN! And the fish are weird and toothy and EAT MEN! Sometimes I watch these things on TV and I sit on the Itchy Couch and I’m just so glad to be me, living here and having my own little, funny life.
130 Even typing that makes me feel sad and weird because only Freddie Blue ever called me kiddo, and now I guess we are not friends anymore and no one will ever call me kiddo again, which is good, because I hated being called kiddo, but at the same time it’s sad, because it’s like time is passing and I’m not ready for all this stuff to change, even though it’s not really a life change to suddenly not be called an insulting name.
131 The death-on-a-stick-purple-puffy-shirt swept the school so immediately that a visitor to our planet — say an alien coming to inhabit our bodies after sucking our souls out our ears — would think that it was part of our uniform. I do not own one of those shirts and I am v. happy about that. NO ONE looks good in that shirt. Not even Freddie Blue, and she looks good in (almost) anything.
132 Real encyclopedias don’t have quizzes either. They just stop at the end. After the last word. Which is almost always ZZ Top, which is this really awful rock band whose members all sport knee-length beards and sunglasses and which was very popular in the 1980s. That will almost certainly come up in a trivia game one day and maybe the fact that you know that will help you to win. Which makes this all worthwhile. So you’re welcome.
133 That’s how my favorite book of all times ends. Which you’d know if you’d followed my excellent advice back in the Books entry. But it’s not the end of mine. At least, not quite.
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