by Jim Benton
pair of disapproving mimes.
I called Isabella after dinner and asked her to
make a list of her summer plans and bring it over
tomorrow, so we could see whose list is better. I
had to caution her because her list last year had a
couple things on it that I think are illegal to even
put on a list. Isabella says that if you write “just
kidding” after anything you write, you can’t be
held accountable for it.
I’m not sure that would always work.
19
I’ve stayed up really, really late tonight so
that I’ll sleep in tomorrow. I’m sure I have the
strength, ambition, and willpower to lie
in bed like a worthless piece of garbage till noon.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Dumb
Diary, my vegetarianism didn’t work out at dinner,
either. Dad brought home a pepperoni pizza. But I
choose to believe that the pepperoni was made
from a pig that donated his body to science.
(I know that pizzas aren’t exactly science,
but I bet scientists eat a lot of pizza, and pizzas
need pepperonis, and anyway, shut up.)
20
Wednesday 04
Dear Dumb Diary,
I woke up at exactly the same time this
morning as when I was using my alarm clock. I lay
there for a looong time, trying to fall back asleep.
Wouldn’t you think that falling asleep is the easiest
thing a person could do? It’s like the total opposite
of doing something hard:
“We want you to just lie there and not
do anything. Don’t think or talk, either.”
“So you’re asking me not to accomplish
anything at all?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m sorry, that’s too much to ask.”
21
Isabella came over at lunch. We had a
vegetarian lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches,
which my mom didn’t ruin because Isabella made
them. Isabella’s mom is an incredible cook, so
Isabella must have inherited her mother’s instincts
for making cheese sandwiches in the way cows
inherit the instinct to make cheese.
I know what you’re thinking, Dumb Diary:
Some vegetarians don’t eat cheese. Those are
called vegans. But I can’t be that. I’m the kind of
vegetarian that does eat cheese and some meat
but not meat for every single meal every single day.
So for certain temporary periods of time I’m a
vegetarian. I think maybe I’m a vegetempian.
22
One of my all-time favorite things to do in the
summer is go to the zoo, but Isabella refuses to go
anymore because of the warthog.
A warthog, Dumb Diary, is a pig that didn’t
feel it was ugly enough just being a pig, so it went
the extra distance and became smaller, and
wartier, with a knobby face and tusks and a
scraggly mane and very unpleasant attitude.
The warthog at our zoo is named Loverboy.
It’s Isabella’s favorite animal, and always has been.
When we were little and went to the zoo, she would
run all the way to the warthog’s enclosure.
23
But Loverboy is old now, and he never wants
to come out of his little cave because they say
the sun bothers him. So now we can’t go to the zoo
because Isabella won’t go unless she can see the
warthog, and everybody knows it.
But I got her to make a list of things that she
does want to do this summer. You’ll notice that
many of these are in no way illegal.
24
Tomorrow, we plan to get started doing things
on the list. I told Isabella I’d call her when I woke
up, which is going to be right around noon.
25
Thursday 05
Dear Dumb Diary,
I woke up even earlier today than I usually do.
Stinker and Stinkette were fast asleep; my parents
were fast asleep; the rest of the world was fast
asleep except for people that unwisely chose
jobs that make you get up early, like policemen.
Now that I think about it, that must mean crooks
get up really early, too. Otherwise, why would the
police be up? Strange. Crooks strike me as the type
that would sleep in.
They say the early bird gets the worm — they
never said that he pays for it.
26
My mom dropped me off at Isabella’s today.
We hung around outside most of the time because
her mean older brothers were inside playing video
games and, according to Isabella, plotting some
sort of horrible scheme against her and trying on
pretty dresses.
They weren’t really trying on pretty dresses.
Isabella just likes to yell that loud enough for the
neighbors to hear. She goes out of her way to make
her brothers unhappy. She often asks herself, “What
would make my brothers unhappy?” So she won’t
forget, she sometimes wears a bracelet that she
made with the letters WWMMBU on it.
27
As we reviewed our List of Summer Excellence,
we realized that every single thing on it was going to
cost money.
I have a little bit of money in the bank, but
my parents won’t let me touch that. It’s supposed
to help pay for my college education one day, where
I will learn the skills I need to earn the money I’ll
need to pay back all the money I borrowed for the
college education.
28
Isabella asked her mom for money, but since
Isabella’s mom has THREE children, and she is
therefore three times meaner than a mom with only
one, she said no. We tried to escape the room as
soon as we saw her mouth begin to form ADULT
WISDOM, but she’s fast and hit us with, “You
know, girls, the best things in life are free.”
“Like money?” Isabella asked. “So, like, free
money. Free money would be one of the best things
in life, right?”
Isabella really excels at this sort of question,
so her mom really excels at answering them.
“Go outside,” she said.
29
Isabella stayed on the free money theme for
a while. She said that her brothers have money, but
explained that getting it for free could be a little
inconvenient. According to Isabella, it could end up
with me having to chew off a leg in order to free
myself from whatever trap they had set. (That’s
right. “Inconvenient” is how she describes leg
removal by chewing.)
I could see in her eyes that their money
haunted her. If I were them, I would probably take a
few precautions to protect it. Like that giant three-
headed dog from
Harry Potter
.
30
Friday 06
Dear Dumb Diary,
Monday was the last day of school, but
people who work at the school are there a few days
longer than the kids.
I
suspect they are there to finish our report
cards, and to crate up the mean teachers and ship
them to Teacher Island where they live for the
summer, preying on one another in some kind of
savage eat -or-be -eaten jungle environment.
Or, you know, just the report cards.
31
The reason I even brought this up was
because yesterday was my Aunt Carol’s last day at
the school, and she stopped over for lunch when she
was done. She asked how my vacation was going,
because this is the sort of thing adults ask when
they can’t think of something interesting to say.
I told her about my List of Summer
Excellence and how it was looking a little too
spendy.
Aunt Carol told me that she and my mom
used to do little jobs like babysit, rake leaves, or
walk dogs for money. Then she said that my mom
used to steal cars and sell them for money, too, but
she only said that to upset my mom. (Aunt Carol
may be secretly wearing a WWMMSU bracelet.)
Then my mom said Aunt Carol used to charge
people five cents to clean out their trash cans with
her face.
Then Aunt Carol said that right afterward,
she would pay my mom a dollar to lick all the
garbage flavor off her cheeks.
Even though this was all getting pretty
ridiculous, I think they may have given me at least
one pretty good idea: Never have a sister.
32
Saturday 07
Dear Dumb Diary,
I went five whole days without seeing or
hearing from Angeline. I was beginning to get used
to it. It’s true that I have learned to overlook many
of Angeline’s flaws, like her flawlessness,
but she can still be difficult to be around. Like
when she’s lit perfectly, for example.
To my extreme credit, I have learned to
pretend to ignore Angeline’s failure to not be
perfect. So when Aunt Carol and Uncle Dan (the
assistant principal at my school) brought Angeline
over today, I didn’t ask my attack dogs — Stinker
and Stinkette — to bite her, or sit near her with their
epic ugliness and demonic fragrances, or
dribble their putrid froth on her, which might be
worse than being bitten.
33
Angeline was all excited and told me and
Isabella how much she had missed us this week.
We made grunting sounds in response, which got
Angeline all happy and chirpy because evidently we
accidentally said, “Yeah! Us, too!” Maybe we did. I
don’t know, I don’t speak Blondese.
Aunt Carol and Uncle Dan sat down and
smiled and said they had something they wanted to
share with us. Evidently, that often means “We’re
having a baby,” because my mom exploded into this
screaming volcano of laughter and hugged them
and hugged me and hugged Stinker, which scared
him and made him pee. And she started asking
when
and couldn’t stop grinning.
34
At least that’s what “We have
something to tell you” means sometimes,
but not this time. This time it meant that Aunt Carol
and Uncle Dan were planning a trip to Screamotopia
Amusement Park and wanted to know if Angeline,
Isabella, and I wanted to go. This set off a secondary
screaming volcano of laughter. We hugged them
and hugged one another and hugged Stinker, which
made him pee again. Then we started asking
when
when when
and we couldn’t stop grinning. If you do
the math, you’ll notice that New Baby to Mom=
Amusement Park to Girl.
But since my Uncle Dan is an assistant
principal — a tricky creature by nature — there
was a catch. They explained it while we were
spanking Stinker for peeing.
35
If we could raise the money for Screamotopia
admission, Aunt Carol and Uncle Dan would drive us
there and pick up the cost of the hotel so we could
stay overnight. I love hotels. They’re like
magical apartments where you can dump a milk
shake in the tub, and when you get back later, elves
will have cleaned it all up.
My mom said okay, but she was a little mad
that Aunt Carol hadn’t talked to her BEFORE she
told us. (When mom said “BEFORE,” she actually
said it IN ALL CAPITALS like that. Moms can
speak IN ALL CAPITALS when they want.)
Here’s the hard part: We’ll need a hundred
dollars apiece, and we only have about three weeks
to raise it.
36
Angeline’s mom had already told Uncle Dan it
was okay. We called Isabella’s mom on speaker-
phone and she said it was okay, too. She joked that
we should take Isabella’s brothers and dad as well,
and then there was a long silence.
It was one of those jokes where nobody laughs.
37
Uncle Dan added the rule that we could not
just ask family members to give or lend us the
money. We agreed to the deal, and Uncle Dan made
us shake on it with him. I never really realized how
tiny my hand was until I saw it suffocated inside a
big manly let’s- make-a- deal handshake. I wonder if
I could make money off business ladies who share
this problem, by selling a line of business- lady oven
mitts to help remedy Tiny-Lady-Hand-
Handshake Syndrome.
We decided that the three of us will get
together tomorrow and earn hundreds of dollars. I
told them my intensely revolutionary idea to make
money. I don’t want to say too much right now, but
it’s a brand- new way to bring the intense and much-
desired refreshments of indoors to an intensely
outdoor and intensely convenient location where
the customer will pay intensely for them. Isabella
and Angeline agreed that the idea is so terrific
and intense that we should start thinking about
how we’re going to spend all the extra money
we’ll make.
38
Sunday 08
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella slept over last night. This morning
started with me asking my dad to drive us to the
store to buy the stuff we needed to make money.
Dad immediately objected, partly because I
woke up way too early again and it’s a Sunday. But
mostly because it required the spending of money
and the moving of a butt on a Sunday morning. This
is the day Dad traditionally sets aside to avoid
moving his.
Other people’s butts and money are not a
problem for Dad, but he’s pretty picky about HIS
butt and HIS money and, in particular, separating
one from the other.
39
Thankfully, Mom started writing a list of
chores that needed to be done around the house.
When Dad heard the sound of Mom’s angry little
pencil scratching out a list, he dragged us out
to
the car with a level of panic that I knew meant he
would be willing to push it to the store if he had to.
We bought cups and powdered lemonade mix
and a new plastic pitcher because our old one has a
handle with chew marks on it. They were put there
by me when I was a baby. It turns out that babies,
with their fat legs, short arms, and desire to
chew, are pretty much just miniature, blubbery
Tyrannosaurus rexes on a never-ending hunt
for wounded young triceratops — or plastic
household items — to gnaw on.
40
By the time Angeline showed up, I had
already made my GRAND OPENING sign for
our lemonade stand. We’d finally decided to call it
IJA Lemonade, a name created by using our
first initials, which I don’t think really reflected the
entire scope of my vision for our establishment.
We stood out on my front lawn all afternoon,
trying to get somebody to buy our lemonade. I’m
confident that the cars that sped by at 40 miles per
hour would have at least slowed down to consider
making a beverage purchase at Lemon-o -
tastical-abulous Vegetarian Lemonade.
(That’s what I wanted to call it, but Isabella
wouldn’t go for it on the grounds that it was
stupid.) They might have even ordered something
off the light lunch menu that I prepared.
41
We were so desperate that I even ALMOST
hoped that Mrs. Ryan across the street would bring
over her crazy triplet sons. They’re two years old,
but they are as wild and screamy as baboons.
(Mrs. Ryan always looks as though she just woke
up from sleeping in a car trunk.)
Finally, after three full hours, we had our first
customer. Cigarette Lady and her little grandson
were out for a walk and he begged her to stop for a
lemonade.
I don’t know Cigarette Lady’s real name, but
she always smells like cigarettes. One time when my
