by Jim Benton
do voodoo against her. You can’t really argue this
sort of thing with Isabella. She feels pretty strongly
about voodoo, having tried to work it several
thousand times. But she did have another idea, and
face it: Isabella always has great ideas.
She said we’d just pretend we’re working
for Angeline’s charity. We’ll go to a couple houses
of people we know and collect old clothes. It’s not
really a lie, right? Since we kind of ARE working for
the charity.
The first house we went to was Mrs. Clawson’s.
She’s the old lady who lives next door to me. We told
her about the charity, blah, blah, blah,and she
gave us a great big bag of old clothes, so I was done
in just one house! Except that when we got
back to my house, we found that the entire bag was
full of those giant old-lady underpants that look
like old army-man parachutes with two big holes
shot through them.
There was NO WAY I was going to let
Angeline think those were mine, so I gave them to
Stinker to eat or bury or whatever he does with stuff
like that. He was still mad at me for sitting on him,
so I figured that would make us even.
The Cutlers live on the other side of us, so
we went there next. They have a couple of girls in
college, so I figured the clothes they’d have to
donate wouldn’t make me look too bad.
Just as Mrs. Cutler was handing over a
couple of items, Isabella added that we were
also collecting donations for The Juvenile
Optometry Federation, which supplies
eyeglasses and such to underprivileged kids.
Incredibly, Mrs. Cutler handed Isabella five dollars
for it.
Isabella said that she got the information
about this charity online and I could help her
collect for it if I wanted to, so as we made the
rounds for the clothes, we also picked up a few
bucks here and there for the Juvenile Optometry
Federation.
Hooray! Now I have a charity to work for.
In your face, Angeline — now I’m as gentle and
sweet as you, you pig. And we got almost 15 dollars
in donations already!!
Sunday 15
Dear Dumb Diary,
Okay. Remember how I didn’t know exactly
what Stinker would do with a bag of old-lady
underpants? Well, this morning, I found out what he
would do. He would run outside and, like, STREW
them across Mrs. Clawson’s front lawn, from one
side to the other, until it looks like her lawn is
covered with humongous, billowy mushrooms.
And of course my first impulse would be to
just close the blinds and lie about it, but if Mrs.
Clawson looked out there and saw her unmention-
ables being mentioned like crazy, she might have
a heart attack. There was nothing I could do but
run outside before anybody else saw and gather
them up.
Not with my hands, of course. With barbecue
tongs. I mean, c’mon. Old-lady underpants? uck.
So I ran over there with a little wastebasket
and my tongs, and started picking them up and
quickly getting them into the can — hopefully
before Mrs. Clawson looked out the window or
any neighbors walked past. I had about half of
them gathered up when around the corner comes
Angeline and about a thousand of her Walk-A-
Thonners. Remember when Angeline mentioned the
next Walk-A-Thon? Turns out it was today.
Of course Angeline had to stop and say hi
and have a good look at the lawn, the tongs, the
can, and the old-lady underpants. “What are you
doing?” she asked.
Dumb Diary, I’m going to level with you. It
was not easy to admit the truth to Angeline.
So I didn’t.
“Mrs. Clawson has a severe allergy to dryers,
so every week, I charitably launder her giant
horrible underpants and gently lay them out here
on the lawn to dry,” I said, and at this point, I
gently tonged one pair of panties and spread it out
carefully. “It’s a lot of work, and of course a ghastly
eyesore, but I do it out of charity.”
“Want me to help?” she said, trying to muscle
in on my charity. It was fake, but still, it was mine.
“That’s okay,” I said, and waved my panty
tongs at her until she and the others had walked all
the way down the block.
Then I scooped up Mrs. Clawson’s dainties
and threw them in the trash.
It was a close call, Dumb Diary, but I got
away with it. No more old-lady underpants for
Stinker. Not until Christmas, anyway.
Monday 16
Dear Dumb Diary,
It’s amazing how excited Isabella is over our
new charity thing. I told her that I really thought
this Juvenile Optometry Federation was going to
make us better people and she agreed. In fact, she
agreed so much that she even laughed a little.
She’s made a sign that she taped up in the
hallway at school. We’re supposed to get permission
to tape things up, but Isabella said that charity
flyers are automatically okay.
Isabella even made us cute little donation
cans to carry around. It was amazing! Even the
assistant principal coughed up some spare change,
probably because he has a soft spot for glasses. He
has those kind of ultrapowerful glasses that make it
look like he can see the molecules on the moon.
Isabella says we’re up to almost 32 dollars,
and soon we’ll have enough to give to the charity.
We can both feel ourselves becoming beautifuller
inside.
Soon, our inner beauty will be so
inflamed that it will rupture through our skin and
spew bubbling squirts of beauty all over ourselves
and all over the floor that the janitors will have
to clean up with their special throw-up sawdust.
Doesn’t that sound magnificent?
Let’s see Angeline’s inner beauty match up
to that.
Tuesday 17
Dear Dumb Diary,
Angeline and Hudson were making me really
mad today in Phys Ed with their stupid chatter, so
I tried to get my little group to really organize and
think up how to safely get our baby across the lake
of crocodiles. TUKWNIF (That Ugly kid Whose Name
I Forget) suggested that we put the baby in the
pot and slide it across the floor. But I said if the
pot tips over, or doesn’t make it all the way over
there, the baby is crocodile chow.
Pinsetti thought we could cut the baby into
pieces and throw those across the gym, since the
rules just said that we couldn’t throw the baby but
didn’t say anything about throwing chunks of baby.
We decided that the multiple head injuries weren’t
doing Pinsetti any good.
But somehow this gave Isabella an idea —
though she refused to share it with us. She said
she was afraid the others would hear us and steal
the idea. She said she knows how to do it, but she’s
keeping it a secret for now. That was just as well,
because we could hear the buses pulling up outside,
which is sort of our cue to stop working hard
because the school day is almost over.
Oh, yeah. And as I was jerking open the door
to run out of the gym, I may have opened it slightly
on Pinsetti’s face, but he should be used to that by
now. He’s taken more blows to the head this month
than a sturdy piñata at a greedy kid’s birthday
party.
Wednesday 18
Dear Dumb Diary,
They announced a new fund-raising Jump-
Rope-A-Thon event in school today. It’s a jump
rope marathon, and you get people to sponsor you
based on the number of times you jump over the
rope without tripping. The Jump-A-Thon is a week
from now, and the money goes to the school, which
is finally a pretty good charity, I think. (Maybe they
can use the money to buy some new office ladies,
since the ones we have now are a little wrinkled and
stained.)
Hudson asked us if we were going to be
participating. Of course, Isabella and I are doing it,
but when Angeline walked by and Hudson asked her,
she choked a bit before she said yes.
That little choke made me think that maybe
she’s all out of inner beauty. Can that happen? Can
you use up your inner beauty? Can you touch it up
by swallowing cosmetics?
Thursday 19
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella explained her solution to us today
in gym. She made us huddle together so that she
could secretly describe it. She was not going to let
anybody else have the answer.
When we heard her solution, we just smiled.
SheHAD figured it out, and we decided to try it
right after class.
As always, everybody immediately ran out
of the gym when the bell rang, and that gave us
enough time to attempt Isabella’s solution before
we demonstrated it in class to Mr. Dover.
We put the pot over the baby’s head. Isabella
explained that the pot was a safety precaution to
protect our baby. I held the rubber snake’s tail,
and TUKWNIF held its head. Isabella positioned the
baby in the middle of the snake body and pulled
it back like a slingshot. Isabella is a master aimer
because sometimes the best way for her to battle
her brothers is to attack them from a distance.
She let the baby go and —TWANG— it
easily sailed over the pretend crocodiles and right
into Pinsetti’s arms, safe and sound!
We had totally followed the rules. We hadn’t
“thrown” the baby. We had launched the baby.
Dover is going to give us an A for sure.
And, to everybody’s surprise, I didn’t
accidentally injure Pinsetti’s head today, which I’m
sure made him feel better.
But that didn’t last long, because when he
put his cap on, he opened the scab for, like, the
third time.
Isabella gently consoled him by telling him
that his head injuries are our team’s good-luck
charm, so Pinsetti should feel proud. Also, she
gently yelled at him to quit crying, which I think
helped us.
Friday 20
Dear Dumb Diary,
Angeline’s picture was in the paper again.
And Hudson was the one that brought it to
my attention. “Look! Angeline has her picture in the
paper again. This time it’s for donating all those
clothes!”
Angeline walked by and Hudson was all,
“Look, Angeline. It’s you again.”
Angeline pretended to blush. “It’s just these
charity things. Sooner or later they all wind up in
the paper. Sometimes months afterward. I don’t
know why I manage to get in the shots so often."
Gosh, hmm. Let’s think about that for a
moment. Hmm. Gee. I can’t imagine. It couldn’t
have anything to do with your unfairly beautiful
exterior and your even beautifuller interior, could
it?? Hmm. No, couldn’t be that. Gosh, Angeline.
It’s a real mystery, isn’t it?
Was there a picture of me and Isabella raising
money for our charity — The Juvenile Optometry
Federation? (Donations now exceed 35
dollars!) No. Any picture of me getting pledges
for the Jump-Rope-A-Thon next Wednesday? No.
(I’m up to THREE pledges, thank you very much.
Dad couldn’t donate. He said he lost his wallet at a
rodeo. Wait a second. I don’t remember any rodeo.)
Saturday 21
Dear Dumb Diary,
Today seemed like a great day to do charity.
Isabella said that she knew she’d be more beautiful
soon, too. We tried to get Jump-A-Thon money from
her folks, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, you
name it. And we watched those sponsors escalate
from three sponsors to a mind-boggling . . .
Seven sponsors.
That’s seven sponsors BETWEEN US. Most
people pledge a penny a hop. So if Isabella and I
jump rope a hundred times in a row, we may raise
enough money to provide one student with a box
of crayons. Not the box of 64 with the sharpener,
of course. Just the box of 16, and not even a good
brand, just those waxy ones they give you at
restaurants.
Sunday 22
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella came over today to practice jumping
rope. We figure that our best strategy is to jump
way longer than a hundred jumps. I am an only
child, which means that, growing up, I often had
nothing better to do than stand out in the driveway
by myself and practice jumping rope. kids with no
brothers or sisters usually have a couple of these
skills that require a lot of alone practice time.
As I’ve tried to explain to you a million times,
D. D., Isabella has mean older brothers, so the jump
rope was an essential toy for her, as well. Not only is
she good at jumping, she has kung fu–like abilities
with it. When her brothers hear the sound of the
rope whisking on the cement, the hair on the back
of their necks stands up.
No wonder.I’ve seen her do some pretty
scary things with it.
We practiced for a long time this afternoon.
We’re pretty sure we can easily do more than a
hundred hops. We might even be able to buy the
school as many as two pairs of those small, blunt,
dull scissors that you only try to use when somebody
else is borrowing the teacher’s good scissors. Or
maybe we can just buy Margaret a light snack of
forty pencils or so.
Monday 23
Dear Dumb Diary,
Today, I asked Isabella if she wanted to try
to raise more money for the Juvenile Optometry
Federation, and she looked at me as though she
h
ad never heard of it. Had she forgotten about our
charity already?
After a few minutes, it all came back to her
and she said that she sent them the money and now
they had enough and we can stop raising money.
Can you believe it?We totally filled
up a charity. Of course I had to walk over and
share this with Hudson, who was being victimized by
having lunch with Angeline.
“We filled our charity all the way to the top,”
I said. “Full up. COMPLETELY charitized them.
Yup. We charitized the crud out of those kids.”
But Angeline did not look wounded by the
Huge Club of Pure Charity that I had just
hit her in the face with. She looked sort of, well,
impressed. And so did Hudson. Maybe some
of my inner beauty was starting to leak out? It
probably wasn’t the barrette, because I’m still not
sure I’m getting the most out of this thing, and I
don’t think I’m remembering to wear it all the time.
Tuesday 24
Dear Dumb Diary,
What the heck! We were all ready to do our
final test and fling our precious baby through the
air, but Dover said we had to help get the gym set
up for the Jump-Rope-A-Thon, which is tomorrow
after school. I was pretty upset until I realized that
this meant that Anika, Pencilmunch, Blondwad, and
Hudson had to help.
There was not too much to do, really. Hang a
few banners, get the tables and chairs set up for the
judges, open the doors and windows to help air out
the odor of kid stink.
Dover could easily have done this without our
help, but some teachers tend to think that the kids
