by Jim Benton
special snacks or anything that kind of tied it
all together?
Emmily: They’re not allowed to tie us together,
Jamie. That would be wrong. Use your head,
girl! (A full thirty seconds of goose -like
laughter.)
Me: It was nice talking to you, Emm. Talk to you
soon. Bye.
Emmily: Bye, Angeline.
Emmily is good and kind,
She has a loving heart.
Emmily is sweet as pie,
And almost half as smart.
Sunday 15
Dear Dumb Diary,
I couldn’t bring myself to work on my social-
studies report today, even though I knew I should.
Why does that happen? Sometimes I’ll look at
my messy room, or a pile of homework, or the ocean
of dog turds in the backyard I’m supposed to pick
up, and I’ll know that I HAVE to do something
about it. I’m going to get in trouble if I don’t, and I
know exactly what to do, but I don’t.
Then I know that I should feel bad about
that, but I don’t want to feel bad, either, so I don’t.
There are a lot of forces at work here, trying to
make me do the right thing, but I don’t do them.
People don’t appreciate how much willpower
it takes to do the wrong thing.
I’ll try to summarize it in a poem:
Monday 16
Dear Dumb Diary,
I had to do Isabella’s hair AGAIN this
morning, and she was rude enough to time how long
it was taking me.
“Jamie, you know that my dad makes a lot of
money, right?” she said.
Surprisingly, that’s not the most ridiculous
thing she’s ever asked me. . . .
But it’s up there.
See, I KNOW Isabella’s family isn’t rich. Her
dad doesn’t make any more money than my dad.
And Isabella KNOWS that I know that, but just
because something is a fact doesn’t always mean
much to Isabella.
“Yeah. I forgot to tell you,” she said. “He
makes, like, a whole lot of money now, and if that
gets around, I don’t really mind. It’s a whole lot of
money. Who do you think is the richest kid in our
school?”
I told her that I used to assume it was
Angeline, but now I know that she’s far from rich. So
I have no idea who it is.
Then Isabella began to smear on her precious
ChocoMint Lip Smacker.
“Does it look like I’m wearing fancy lipstick?”
she asked. She had put it on really thick.
“It looks more like you made out with a
glazed donut,” I said, and wiped most of it off.
It was still an awful lot of balm. She must be
expecting some kind of major chapping.
We met in groups again today in social
studies so we could compare our progress. Mr. Smith
came around and listened in with his grouchy face
and crazy toupee.
Don’t look at it. Don’t look at it.
Pinsetti and Angeline had a bunch of material
about how other cultures think our food is gross, or
how the way we dress is awful, or that our behavior
is all wrong.
It’s like no matter what you do, others don’t,
but they should.
Here’s a useful chart I prepared to show you
how the entire world is set up against you.
Yolanda and Isabella didn’t have very much
information to share, and I could tell by looking at
their dainty notes that Isabella hadn’t contributed
anything to the report.
Mr. Smith noticed it, too, and asked Isabella
what she personally had learned about marriage
around the world.
“I’m still working on that, Mr. Smith,” she
said. “Nice tie.”
They say you always remember where you
were or what you were doing the first time you
experience an earthquake, or a tornado, or, I don’t
know, some other rare natural event. A penguin
mauling, let’s say.
Me? I’ll always remember the time
Isabella complimented a teacher.
“Oh,” Mr. Smith said, his grouchy face
twisting into a huge smile. “Thanks. You know, my
wife gave this to me. I get more compliments on
this tie. . . .”
And he stood up and moved on to the next
group.
I stared at Isabella, and she knew I was
staring. She wanted to look over at me and grin, I
could tell, but she didn’t. It took every muscle in her
whole muscular face, but she controlled it, and
later on she wouldn’t even talk about it.
Tuesday 17
Dear Dumb Diary,
Word is out that we’re planning the dance, so
we’ve received a lot of suggestions.
Spitty Elizabeth suggested an underwater
theme. (Probably because of her familiarity with
moisture.)
Margaret, the pencil chewer, suggested a
ninja theme. (Thinking of those delicious
numchucks no doubt.)
Vicki, the copier of everybody, suggested an
underwater ninja theme, and then argued that she
didn’t copy off anybody. NOTE TO COPIERS:
WE KNOW, OKAY.
And then Pinsetti came over to make a
suggestion.
“How about a fancy theme? Where everybody
dresses up and acts fancy and every thing like
that?” he suggested. “Polite underwear, nice
snacks that you can’t blow out your nose. All that
really fancy stuff.”
This from the guy with the nostril noodle.
The guy with thirty- seven words for diarrhea. (Only,
like, nine of them are even funny.) The guy who once
ate a beetle off an old sandwich on an old shoe.
True, this was years ago, and there was a double
dare involved, but still.
This is the guy who wants a fancy dance?
I prepared a laugh to discharge directly into
the middle of his face just as Isabella spoke up.
“That’s a good idea, Mike,” she said, doubling
her previous record for compliments given in a month.
Isabella wanted a fancy dance,
too.
Then she turned to me.
“Oh, Jamie. Don’t worry about that seven
hundred dollars you owe me. You don’t have to pay
me back.”
WHAT?
No hair spray for Isabella tomorrow. I’m afraid
that she may have accidentally inhaled some.
Wednesday 18
Dear Dumb Diary,
So at lunch today, Isabella went and asked
Angeline to tell us every thing we needed for a fancy
dance. We didn’t need her help, of course, but
Isabella can be a little impulsive. Before Angeline
could answer, Hudson butted in.
“Whose idea was this?” he demanded.
Pinsetti was giving us the tiniest frantic
secret head shakes, indicating that we
shouldn’t say that it had been him.
“It was Angeline’s idea,” Isabella said.
Angeline started to say that it wasn’t, but
sh
e saw Pinsetti’s panic and decided to reluctantly
go along with it. You know, because she’s nice.
“Yeah. It. Was. My. Idea,” she said, and
Hudson calmed down because eighty pounds of
radiant pure blond hair just has that effect on
Hudson, I guess.
Isabella said that Angeline should make a
list of all the fancy things we need for a fancy
dance, like fancy snacks, and fancy signs, and
fancy balloons.
“Is there, like, some kind of fancy air that
fancy people use in their balloons?” Isabella
asked her.
“You mean like helium?” Angeline said
unpleasantly.
“Helium is just fancy air, isn’t it?” Isabella
said, as though some secret balloon scam had just
been revealed to her.
I suppose all of this fancy dance stuff has
something to do with customs and manners, and that
means we can all use it in our reports. We’d better
be able to use it in our reports. I’m sacrificing my
Koala Evening of Fantasy theme for this.
Dances always require a few adult chaperones,
so I asked Sebastian if he’d like to be a chaperone
for our fancy dance since he’s so sophisticated
and junk.
I didn’t want to leave Yolanda out of our
dance planning — since she’s doing the report with
Isabella, she’s kind of a temporary friend now. I
asked her if she could review every thing for
daintiness.
She looked at me as if I had just produced a
nose noodle of my own, but I’m sure she gets what
I mean.
Thursday 19
Dear Dumb Diary,
Meat loaf again, but without Bruntford
around to make sure that you choke down every
crumb, it’s not so bad. Yup, there’s nothing that
improves school meat loaf like not eating it.
Pinsetti wore a tie to school today, and
actually pulled out a chair for Angeline when
she sat down.
This caused a huge conflict in my feelings
about him.
My first assumption, of course, was that he
was wearing a tie because somebody had tied it
around him, and he wasn’t able to get it off. (Stuff
like that happens to my dog, Stinker, all the time.)
The next thought I had was that he was going to
pull the chair away when Angeline sat down.
But Angeline was seated safely, and the tie
was only partially stupid-looking, and since it
would be very hard for Pinsetti to seem any grosser,
I had to admit that all of this was kind of an
improvement.
This is the advantage the gross have over
the rest of us. Almost anything makes them look
better.
Hudson quizzed Pinsetti about the tie —
where he learned to tie it and all that — and
Pinsetti said that he just wanted to practice so that
he knew what to do for the dance.
Then Isabella said she thought it was a great
idea, and an awesome tie. (That’s right, Dumb
Diary: compliments number three and four.)
I used my eyes to send Isabella a message
that said, “You are sounding like a huge weirdo.”
She used her eyes to send a message back to me
saying, “What? What are you talking about?” Then I
sent her a message with my eyes that said, “You
know exactly what I’m talking about,” and then I
think Isabella swore at me with her eyes.
Sebastian stopped briefly at our table and
said hello. He even commented that Pinsetti looked
“dashing” in his tie.
Then he turned to Angeline.
“What kind of knot would you say he’s tied
there, Angeline? A Prince Albert? A Windsor?”
Sebastian stood and smiled, awaiting her expert
opinion.
Angeline shrugged her shoulders.
“It’s a four - in -hand,” Hudson said.
We all looked at him, and he coughed.
“That’s what Pinsetti told me it was. Right,
Mike? Something like that, I think you said.”
“You know all those knots?” Isabella asked
Mike, clearly impressed.
“Yes, thank you,” Pinsetti said, grinning.
Before he walked away, I made sure that
Sebastian saw some graceful, well - mannered,
delicate things going on over here in Jamieville.
Friday 20
Dear Dumb Diary,
There’s just about a week to go
Until our fancy dance.
I think that I might wear a dress,
The boys will wear some pants.
Okay, okay. Maybe this one is a little too
simple. I’ll bet Shakespeare had a few days when he
had trouble with his poems, too:
Saturday 21
Dear Dumb Diary,
Hudson and I needed to get together today to
work on our report. I wanted him to come over, but
that would technically be a date and possibly lead
to an engagement. (I’m too young, Hudson, please.
Get over it. ) So I suggested we all get together
as a large group, instead.
Pinsetti recommended meeting at Hudson’s
house, since it’s kind of in the middle for all of us.
So we all agreed and called Hudson this morning to
let him know that he agreed, too.
I had never been inside Hudson’s house,
although I was very familiar with the part of the
front room you could see if you leaned way over and
peeked in the window when nobody was home just
before you fell in the bushes.
The house was very nice and quite tidy. You’re
never really prepared for a boy’s house to be tidy.
You expect every thing to be wrinkly and have
cargo pockets.
Hudson’s mom set us up in their basement,
and brought us orange juice and cookies. She used
real glasses and real plates — not like my mom, who
has actually served us sandwiches on envelopes
when the dishes were dirty.
The group-homework strategy worked pretty
well this time. It turns out that I had discovered
some things about marriage that Isabella and
Yolanda could use, and Angeline and Pinsetti
passed along some stuff about manners that they
had found.
And every time somebody felt like goofing
off, there were enough other people there to keep
them going. Maybe these group projects aren’t as
dumb as most of us have learned they are.
We even had a little time at the end to talk
about the dance. Pinsetti had an idea for a game
where you have to put all of the pieces of a fancy
table setting into the right places. You know, like,
“the salad fork goes here, the bread plate goes
there.” He had a printout of a complicated setting
he found online.
I thought it was too hard, but Hudson said it
was stupid because it was too easy.
“Too easy?” Pinsetti said. “Yeah, right, you
couldn’t —”
And before he could even finish, Hudson h
ad
scribbled a setting on a piece of paper.
He handed it to Angeline.
“Check it, Angeline. Is it right?” he asked.
Angeline took the paper and started to check
it before a look of anger flashed across her face.
She suddenly pushed it back at him in a way that
was anything but nice.
“What makes you think I would know if this
was right or not?” she said angrily.
Pinsetti checked it against the printout.
“You’re right. This is all right. How did you
know this?” Pinsetti asked.
Hudson made a face as though he realized
that he had just been caught tossing mice on tiny
crutches into a bathtub full of cats.
“I saw it in some movie once,” he mumbled.
“Time to go.”
Sunday 22
Dear Dumb Diary,
Poster Time! That’s right. Dances need
posters, and posters need me.
Today I started drawing and decorating with
such artistic fury that Dad left the kitchen twice to
hack glitter out of his lungs.
Stinker and his dogdaughter, Stinkette, are
dumb, and believe that all of the events occurring
on a kitchen table involve food, so they will consider
eating anything that falls off of it. It’s the main
reason I don’t have Isabella help with these craft
projects, because she likes to cut construction
paper into convincing food shapes and feed it
to them.
Still, I wish I knew somebody that could
help me.
I called Angeline a few times for advice on
the fanciest way to word the posters, but I’m not
sure her heart was in it. I finally figured it out
without her help. It’s what you’d expect from a
C.O.G. (That stands for creature of grace, if
you’re too ill-mannered and indelicate to know.)
Monday 23
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella asked me to lend her some earrings
