by Jim Benton
You Can Bet on That
Think you can handle
Jamie Kelly’s first year of diaries?
#1 Let’s Pretend This Never Happened
#2 My Pants Are Haunted!
#3 Am I The Princess Or The Frog?
#4 Never Do Anything, Ever
#5 Can Adults Become Human?
#6 The Problem With Here Is That It’s Where I’m From
#7 Never Underestimate Your Dumbness
#8 It’s Not My Fault I Know Everything
#9 That’s What Friends Aren't For
#10 The Worst Things in Life Are Also Free
#11 Okay, So Maybe I Do Have Superpowers
#12 Me! (Just Like You, Only Better)
And don’t miss . . .
Year Two #1: School . Hasn’t This Gone On Long Enough?
Year Two #2: The Super-Nice Are Super-Annoying
Year Two #3: Nobody’s Perfect. I’m As Close As It Gets.
Year Two #4: What I Don’t Know Might Hurt Me
Year Two #5: You Can Bet on That
Year Two #6
Jim Benton’s Tales from Mackerel Middle School
Y
EAR
TWO
De
a
r Dum
b
Diary,
You Can Bet on That
BY JAMIE KELLY
SCHOLASTIC INC.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted,
downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into
any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means,
whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without
the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding
permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department,
557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
ISBN 978-0-545-64351-1
Copyright © 2014 by Jim Benton
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.
scholastic and associated logos are trademarks
and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
dear dumb diary is a registered trademark of Jim Benton.
First printing, June 2014
Special thanks to Kristen LeClerc,
Shannon Penney, Abby McAden,
Jackie Hornberger, and Yaffa Jaskoll.
Dear Whoever Is Reading My Dumb Diary,
You’re really kind of gambling with your
life here, you know, reading somebody else’s
private — yet
highly important — diary.
I’ll bet you’re the type of person who would
sell your mom for a donut, and you don’t even
really like donuts much, which makes it way
worse than if you were super into donuts. I
mean, if you’re going to sell your mom, you
should at least do it for something you
like.
So put the diary down, you rat, and back away
from the table before you lose something more
than just a bet. (I’m pulling my finger across my
neck in a threatening way right now.)
Signed,
P.S. If you don’t like donuts, you might like
muffins or cupcakes, which are just muffins in
clown makeup.
P.P.S. Wait. Why am I helping you sell your mom?
Sunday 01
Dear Dumb Diary,
The Internet is one of the most sophisticated
pieces of human engineering ever. It was designed
to help people all over the world share pictures of
cats and lie to each other.
Here’s a handy checklist to help you tell if
somebody on the Internet is lying to you:
1.) They write you an email.
2.) That’s it.
They write you an email. That’s how you
can tell.
It will be an email from somebody you don’t
know and will say you’ve won a prize or inherited
money, or there’s something wrong with your
computer/account/internal organs and they need
all your private information to fix it. It makes me
wonder what all the crooks were doing while they
were waiting for the Internet to be invented.
1
We talk about Internet stuff like this often
because everybody is using it more and more at
my school. I think that’s a good thing, but I dimly
remember that there used to be human beings that
we called “librarians,” and I have this nagging
feeling they did important stuff with things we
called “boks” or “boacks” or something like
that, before the Internet did everything for us.
Maybe I’m just imagining them.
Oh well.
You might remember, DD, that Isabella
and I and this one blond girl are now all founding
members of the Student Awareness Committee. So
we have a little blog on the Internet that we started
to make other students aware of things, I guess. I
don’t know. This was the blond’s idea.
Personally, I don’t really like being aware
of things. It makes it harder to ignore them.
2
Sunday used to be the day I reserved for doing
the homework I should have done Friday night or
Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon or Saturday
night, but these days I spend a lot of Sunday hiding
from my mom, who has decided that she wants to
make me clothes.
Let’s just pause and take a deep breath
and contemplate the staggering impact of what I
just said.
Back when she was a little girl, making your
own clothing was probably a great idea. Her mom
and the lady who harvested coal or whatever would
take a covered wagon over to where they were
planning on signing the Declaration of Independence
one day, and they would make their daughters
clothes.
But not anymore, Mom.Not anymore.
3
So far, Mom has only made a couple of
things, but the day will come when she expects
me to wear one of them outside the house. I am a
very optimistic person, and I’m hoping that all of
humanity will have been destroyed in a massive
flaming meteor strike by then.
4
Monday 02
Dear Dumb Diary,
Today, my social studies teacher, Mr. Smith
(who wears a wig), announced that we’re going to
be doing a section on debate. Debate is when you
argue with somebody, but you aren’t allowed to call
them ugly just because you’re losing, which is weird
because that would be the perfect time.
In the past, we’ve had debate sections in
English, but since everybody argues about everything
these days, debate is getting super-popular.
And I guess we need to learn debating skills in
case we ever have a disagreement with somebody
who is very att
ractive, and we can’t come up
with anything to say that will hurt their feelings
during the argument.
5
But I believe that nature is beautiful and
perfectly balanced, and therefore there’s
SOMETHING gross and ugly about everybody
that you can haul out and criticize. Further proof
of how optimistic I am, I suppose.
This is why I asked Angeline if she wanted
to be my opponent. This, and the fact that if we
partnered up with each other, there would be no risk
of either one of us having to face off with Isabella.
I’m not that thrilled about partnering with
Angeline, but when you face off with Isabella, she
might actually try to take your face off.
6
Before we actually have the debates, we
have to learn THE BIG OFFICIAL RULES OF
DEBATE. Mr. Smith began listing them today.
Like, if you make a statement, you have to
give factual proof.
And you may not throw things at your
opponent. (He was looking right at Isabella when he
said that rule.)
And you must remain calm and may not call
names. (Again, looking at Isabella.)
And you may not threaten your opponent,
either during class or later, at night, over the phone
with a fake voice and the sound of a chainsaw in
the background. (Isabella again. Seriously, I think
almost all of the rules of debate were made for
Isabella.)
The winner of each debate gets to pick the
debate topic for the next team. Mr. Smith says that
way we won’t be able to prepare our arguments —
we’ll have to debate using only our wits, the way
wild animals do.
7
Isabella partnered up with Dicky Flartsnutt.
You might remember, Dumb Diary, that Dicky is kind
of a friend of ours, even though he will never let you
totally forget that he was BORN TO NERD.
Dicky is very sweet, but he’s sort of like a
baby goat chained to a tree in a pit full of tigers
with a bunch of cinnamon buns tied to him. (It’s a
well-known science fact that tigers love cinnamon
buns, probably.)
We’ve become attached to Dicky and we
feel a bit protective of him. None of us would ever
do anything to hurt his feelings in a million years,
which says a lot, because in most cases, Isabella
would be willing to hurt most people’s feelings for
a million years.
8
I’m sure Angeline will put something up on
our Student Awareness Committee blog about the
debate project. And I’m sure it will be very chirpy
and perky, like all her posts.
One time, she actually posted about how
much fun it was to post on the blog. And then she
put up pictures of herself doing it.
And she posted about how much fun it was
to put up the pictures.
And then she posted about how much fun it
was to post about how much fun it was to put up
the pictures, too.
Angeline, the Internet only APPEARS to be
interested in what you’re saying because it can’t
stand up and walk away while you’re talking to it.
9
Tuesday 03
Dear Dumb Diary,
Diseases.
That’s what Mrs. Curie, my science teacher,
wanted to talk about today.
I learned that very few diseases are
appealing, and that you can protect yourself from
a ton of them just by washing your hands.
Hand sanitizer attacks 98% of all germs, and
100% of all paper cuts and hangnails. I think it’s
designed that way so that when you start violently
shaking your hands in pain, the dead germs go
flying off. Live germs all over your hands are
only slightly worse than dead germs all over
your hands.
At first, this might make you think that
sanitizer scientists are pretty clever, but remember,
these scientists are still totally cool with not
killing 2% of the germs on your hands. That’s about
ONE MILLION GERMS, who are now full of
alcohol, staggering around on your hands, super-
angry that you wiped out their families and tried to
kill them, too.
Do we want this? Vengeful, incoherent germs
plotting against us?
Scientists: Think. Things. Through.
Isabella seemed interested in what Mrs. Curie
was saying, but I’m sure she was just curious about
whether there were any minor diseases that could
be slipped into her mean older brothers’ cornflakes
undetected. Isabella is very sweet and would only
want her brothers to have minor diseases. But she
did ask if any germs were smart enough to be
trained, like attack dogs.
Angeline was perky and attentive throughout
the disease discussion, and it occurred to me how
different the three of us are:
12
After class, Angeline started bugging us to
contribute something to the Student Awareness
Committee blog thing.
“You two are presidents of the Student
Awareness Committee. You should be contributing,”
Angeline hissed, but she didn’t really hiss exactly.
It was more like “pleasantly chirped.” But I’m
pretty sure that a hiss was implied.
Isabella said that the blog sounded too
much like homework and she already has a ton
of homework from math and science and social
studies to ignore, so she doesn’t think she can find
the time to ignore more.
Then Angeline pointed out that the whole
school reads this blog, and it would be great for
them to have the benefit of my observations.
13
Look, Blondy, I know when I’m being
manipulated. I have dogs that are always begging
for food, I have a best friend who is always trying
to get me to do something hazardous, and most of
all, I have PARENTS, okay, and they try it ALL
the time.
So don’t try to flatter me in order to get me
to contribute.
14
This little attempt of Angeline’s is exactly
the type of thing that people say in order to trick
you into doing something. They think you are so
conceited that you will actually believe everyone is
just dying to have you do this thing or that thing.
Seriously, who would really believe that the
whole school would benefit from their blog entries?
Unless it’s absolutely true, of course,
like it is in my case.
Angeline, you don’t need to bother using
pretend flattery when real flattery is completely
accurate.
15
Wednesday 04
Dear Dumb Diary,
It happened.
It was exactly as I had feared.
Mom left a shirt on my bed this morning that
she made for me.
It was full of her love and hard work and deep
commitment and, from the look
s of it, probably a
lot of monkey vomit.
Not real monkey vomit. Just the same colors,
texture, and smeariness.
16
It was so ugly that at first I thought one of
my dogs had eaten the other, and then became
tremendously sick on my comforter.
No such luck.
I tried it on, because I figured that was the
least I could do.
I’m pretty sure that, just for a moment, I
noticed my reflection making fun of me. If this
was my reflection’s reaction — and, Dumb Diary, my
reflection and I have been through A LOT together —
it was hard to imagine just what sort of abuse I
would endure if I wore the shirt to school.
I know my mom didn’t have to worry about
this sort of thing when she was growing up, what
with all the kids wearing the same period
costume, but it’s different today, Mom. We have
fashion now, and we all have sophisticated
electronic devices to help us make fun of the people
who do fashion wrong.
17
But she IS my mom, and I do love her, and
sometimes love means that you have to do things
you don’t want to do.
Like lying to the people you love.
So I decided to put the monkeyvomit shirt on
over a regular shirt. Then I could just take it off at
school before my friends saw it and destroyed
me forever.
Mom was so happy to see me wearing it that I
could hardly understand why people think
dishonesty is a bad thing.
Dad drove me to school, and when we were
halfway there I noticed his tie. It was monkeyvomit
patterned. It matched my shirt.
18
“I bet you have a different tie in your
briefcase,” I said.
