by Jim Benton
“So, being a Cafeteria Monitor pays
pretty well, huh?” Isabella asked.
Miss Bruntford’s jiggly jowls parted enough
for a smile to squeeze out from between them.
“Not at all,” she said. “But Mr. Bruntford did
quite well. He was already a success when we met.”
Isabella eyed her and nodded with approval.
On the way home, I asked Aunt Carol why
Miss Bruntford goes by Miss Bruntford instead of
Mrs. Bruntford.
Angeline said it was probably to let guys know
she’s available, which made us all laugh pretty hard
as well as become sick.
Aunt Carol said that Bruntford could use any
title she wanted: Miss, Mrs., Ms. Whatever.
Personally, I might like to use Ms. one day. It
will keep my private life private, and it will make the
person talking to me sound like a bee.
Sunday 08
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella came over to work on homework
today. Mom made us lunch, which we ate anyway,
and we dug into the homework for about fifteen
minutes before we took a well-earned break for
seven hours to do other stuff.
During that time, Isabella asked me to do
something with her hair.
This kind of thing is often a trap. You do
something to her hair, and then she offers to
do something to yours, and what she does begins
with spray paint and ends with the emergency room.
With Isabella, it’s best to know exactly
what you’re agreeing to.
So after my mom looked over the terms of our
arrangement and Isabella signed it, I went to work
on her hair.
She remained strangely calm throughout the
process. When we were done, I think I had really
done wonders for her. She looked essentially like a
girl from many angles.
She didn’t even make me change her hair
back when she saw it.
“How long will it stay like this?” she asked.
“You know, female-looking.”
I told her only until she messed it up or slept
on it, of course.
Isabella checked her phone and said that she
had a fight scheduled with one of her mean older
brothers later on, so I would need to fix her hair
again in the morning, before school.
She could learn to do her hair herself, but
when I mentioned that she shoved me, because it
upsets her stomach a bit when she hears the word
“learn.”
I understand. We all have our little medical
conditions. I’m blond intolerant, for example.
Sometimes.
Monday 09
Dear Dumb Diary,
Before school, Isabella had me fix her hair
in the girls’ bathroom. Her hair really is quite
beautiful. It’s black and thick and glossy, like the
majestic hair on a lion if that was black.
She had a test later, and she had written the
answers on a slice of baloney in the sandwich she
brought for lunch. If the teacher saw her, she could
just eat the sandwich and destroy the evidence. But
she wasn’t thinking, and accidentally ate her
lunch while I was doing her hair. Beauty can really
make you hungry.
While she was wiping the ink off her lips, I
explained why cheating is wrong. We have a test in
math next week, and I encouraged her to pack a
lunch you can’t write on. If she brings peanut butter
and jelly, I’ll know I got through to her.
We met in larger groups in social studies
today to discuss what we had learned so far about
other cultures.
Hudson and I shared that there are very few
customs that are universal. Memorize which fork
you use for the salad, and your host hands you a
set of chopsticks. Practice eating gracefully with
chopsticks, and your host serves fried chicken.
How can you ever know what to do?
Isabella and Yolanda seemed to have pretty
similar findings about marriage. Brides don’t
always wear white, marriages don’t all happen in
churches, and the married couple doesn’t always
receive six toasters as gifts. Sometimes it’s even
more than that. (Note to Future Jamie: Consider
marrying a man that works at an appliance store so
it’s easy to exchange all of your wedding gifts for
something good.)
Angeline and Pinsetti had discovered that
people in other countries actually have the nerve to
think that we are doing certain things incorrectly
when it comes to manners or customs. This is very
impolite for them to do to another country, I say,
especially when you consider that THEY’RE
obviously the ones doing things wrong.
It looks like people just pull manners and
customs out of thin air. So I’m just as qualified as
anybody (but more qualified than most, let’s be
honest) to come up with some manners myself.
At lunch today, Isabella actually stopped
Sebastian as he was walking past.
“Hey,” she said. “Angeline said something to
you the other day and you had lunch with us. Let’s
pretend that I’m saying that same thing now. So,
how about it?”
She had him trapped.
“Please?” she added, and for the first
time ever, I believed her.
“Well, okay,” Sebastian said. “Thank you.”
And he sat down.
But Angeline couldn’t just leave it at that.
“Well, this is nice,” she added nicely, as if the
rest of us hadn’t noticed the niceness.
“So, we’re talking now, right?” Isabella said.
“About movies we don’t really care about or things
like that, right? Polite junk.”
Sebastian seemed a little uncomfortable and
looked around the table, locking eyes, one at a
time, with Isabella, Angeline, Pinsetti, Hudson, and
me. Yolanda may have been there, too, but I don’t
remember.
“You’re classy, Sebastian,” Isabella went on.
“Bet you’ve been in a lot of limousines, huh?”
“Er, I haven’t really.” He changed the subject.
“Hey, I know. Why don’t you tell me what you guys
are doing in your classes right now?”
“Manners and customs. Things like that,”
Pinsetti said. “Thank you.”
Pinsetti’s awkward manners, on top of
Isabella’s clumsy invitation and line of questioning,
had Sebastian looking as uncomfortable as a
snowman in a tanning bed. We all sensed it.
Isabella sometimes pinches people when
things get tense this way, and as I saw her fingers
begin to assume the lobster-claw position, I
knew that somebody had to do something. Otherwise,
Sebastian was going to get up and never sit down
with us again, and I would never be judged as a
delicate and well-mannered creature of grace
by the one person I think is qualified to make that
judgment.
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“Okay, here’s what we’re doing,” I said, not
actually telling him what we were doing. “We’re
studying manners and customs, and we’d like your
input. You’re younger than the teachers, but older
than we are, and we think that could help our
reports.”
Sebastian nodded and smiled.
“Okay, now I see,” he said. “You’re studying
me, huh? Like a specimen, to see if I do anything
wrong. I get it. I’ll have to try to be on my best
behavior.”
Pretty cool, huh? Everybody was staring
at me, totally stunned. And who could blame them?
I just captured us our own lunchroom monitor. He’s
not so old that he’s going to tell us useless stuff
about monocle etiquette or the right type of cape
to wear to a summer opera, and he’s not so young
that, like Pinsetti and Hudson, he is willing to eat
pudding with a comb if a spoon is unavailable.
Couldn’t have asked for anything better, right?
“You’ll let me know if I step out of line, right,
Angeline?” he said. “You’re kind of the manners
expert around here, I’m guessing.”
Well. MAYBE I COULD HAVE ASKED
FOR ONE THING BETTER.
Tuesday 10
Dear Dumb Diary,
As we were coming into the school this
morning, Aunt Carol stopped me and Isabella and
pulled us into the office. My Uncle Dan, who is the
vice principal, was there.
“We’d like to know if you two would be willing
to help plan the school dance this month,” she
said. “It’s kind of a lot of work, and I understand if
you don’t —”
“We’ll do it,” Isabella said.
I nodded in agreement, partially because it
sounded like fun and partially because Isabella was
holding my head and nodding it for me.
“Sounds like fun,” I said, yanking my head
away from Isabella’s hands.
As we started walking out of the office,
Angeline walked in.
“Wow, that’s pretty,” she said to Aunt Carol,
spewing niceness all over her outfit.
I clenched my teeth. I knew exactly what was
going to happen.
“Oh, thanks!” Aunt Carol chirped. “Say,
Angeline . . .”
I could see it all happening in slow motion.
Angeline had tossed a niceness grenade, and
Aunt Carol had been hit. I made slow-motion faces
and tried to escape the blast in slow motion, too,
but it was no use.
Now that I think about it, when you
intentionally move in slow motion like that, it looks
a little odd.
“Angeline, would you like to help Jamie and
Isabella plan the dance?” she asked nicely, trying to
ignore my slow-motion thing. Aunt Carol was badly
poisoned by the niceness Angeline had just
inflicted upon her.
“Okay,” Angeline nicely said. And that was
nicely that.
“You’re such a treasure,” Aunt Carol
said to Angeline.
I looked at Isabella, hoping to see one of
those faces where she looks like she’s plotting some
sort of sabotage against somebody. But Isabella
only shrugged. She might have even smiled a little. I
can’t be sure, so I’m going to assume she frowned
and is already planning to do something awful so
Angeline doesn’t help us plan the dance.
Uh-oh. I think I have another poem:
Angeline, you’re such a treasure,
The boys all want to marry ya.
Like all the other priceless treasures
Maybe we should bury ya.
Wednesday 11
Dear Dumb Diary,
Here. Listen to this awful old terrible poem
thing Mrs. Avon made us read today:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds
of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short
a date.
William Shakespeare wrote it. And that’s not
even the entire poem. He goes on and on and on like
this for fourteen lines, and here’s what he was really
saying:
Seriously, it’s all very nice, but to me, poetry
seems like manners. It’s designed to make things
more complicated.
More and more I’m convinced that people
love simple things, and my simplified bumper sticker
stories are the way to go.
See? You just saw three movies in under a
minute. This is such a good idea.
Thursday 12
Dear Dumb Diary,
Manners and meat loafs.
Today, Sebastian came and sat with us at
lunch without even being asked, and we told him
what we had learned in our research so far.
I shared this thing I discovered about Japan,
where it’s rude to stick your chopsticks straight up
and down in your food.
Sebastian said that he didn’t find that too
surprising, since we don’t stick our knife and fork
straight up and down in our food, either.
“Oh yes,” I said gracefully. “That wouldn’t be
at all well-mannered,” I added like a delicate and
well-mannered creature of grace.
Isabella asked Sebastian what he could tell
us about getting married, and how somebody gets
proposed to, but not by a loser.
He said that he wasn’t sure how that fit in
with our whole manners and customs reports, but
he said he thought the best way was to just try to
always do your best in everything.
Isabella said that was a really great
answer. A really really great answer. The most
wonderfullest answer she had ever heard. Ooo.
Just wonderfullerunderfully.
Here’s my face when she said this:
Hudson mentioned that he’d read an article
that said there were no longer any rules or manners
against burping, and that it was always considered
cool to burp whenever you wanted to. He wondered
if Sebastian had read the same article.
Sebastian politely responded that he had
not, and Pinsetti felt as though he should add
something.
“It’s probably okay to do at certain times,
Hudson, but nobody would ever regret it if they
didn’t burp. So, when you think about it, the best
thing to do would be to —”
Then he stopped talking. He was staring at
Angeline.
Angeline had stuck her knife and fork straight
up and down in her meat loaf.
We all just paused for a moment, not knowing
how to react.
Until Sebastian reacted for us.
“Well done, Angeline! Nice of you to illustrate
the point. See why we don’t do that? It’s disruptive
and distracting, and it looks like Angeline is having
a fight with her meal. Well done, Angeline.”
OOOOOOOOOH yes. Well done, Angeline.
It’s SOOOOO splendid how you can do something
>
rude and it is interpreted as something nice. (I’m
clapping very slowly right now.)
So nice. So very nice. So exquisitely nice. So
jerkfully nice. So turdtastically nice.
So so so so so so so nice.
FRIDAY 13
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella has been making me do her hair in
the girls’ bathroom every single morning before
school starts. This morning, while I was working
on it, we came up with a few ideas for dance
themes.
At some point, Angeline walked in and stuck
her big fat nose into our ideas and didn’t really like
any of them, which was bad enough, but her nose is
also not big or fat and that makes it worse.
They have a lot of rules at our school against
mean language, but it’s pretty clear that the rule
makers never had to deal with somebody’s not-big
and not- fat nose in their business.
We asked Angeline if she had any better
ideas. Here’s what she came up with:
Saturday 14
Dear Dumb Diary,
My mom let me call Emmily today for dance-
planning ideas. You remember our friend Emmily,
don’t you, Dumb Diary? She’s very sweet but isn’t
exactly — what’s the polite way to say this? — as
smart as a mammal.
But she does live kind of far away now, and I
thought that maybe the dances they had at her
school were exotic and unusual and I could get
some ideas from her.
Here’s how the call went:
Me: Hi, this is Jamie. Is Emmily there?
Emmily: Jamie’s not here.
Me: No, Emmily. I’m Jamie. I was calling for you.
How are you?
Emmily: OH! I see. This is Emmily.
Me: Yeah. Listen, Emmily, has your school had
any dances this year?
Emmily: Yeah.
Me: Was there a theme?
Emmily: Dancing. The theme was dancing.
Me: Did they have any special decorations or
