by Jim Benton
needs.
It improved my self-esteem to observe all
of the other dads there that were stupid, or extra
stupid, or mildly stupid. I know that maybe some
of those dads were actually smart in real life,
but when dads go the hardware store, they aren’t
really dressing in a way to make you think that.
Still, they all seemed to know exactly what
they were looking for, and they seemed pretty
happy to find it.
Is it possible that none of them are stupid,
but they don’t care if they look that way? Why would
you want to be secretly smart?
After that, Dad dropped me off at Isabella’s
to do pedicures to each other. These are fun but
challenging, because Isabella is ticklish, so she very
often kicks you while you’re painting her toenails.
Isabella decided that we should also work
on math, so that tomorrow we can watch a movie
or invent a new beverage or something like that.
I hate to admit it — because I’m against
admitting things — but the math is getting easier
with Isabella’s coaching.
I think it helps that the whole time I was
doing her pedicure, she was kicking me extra
hard whenever I got a math question wrong.
I’m helping her, too. For her language arts,
I taught Isabella a new word I’ll be using for the
Vocabulary Bee:
Smatchet: A nasty person.
Isabella loved this word, and quickly made
up a little poem that made use of the fact that
“smatchet” rhymes with “hatchet.” I
pointed out that it was likely to get her sent down
to the principal’s office, like the poem she wrote
one time about wolves in which she rhymed “babies”
and “rabies,” or the one she wrote about school
that rhymed “destroyed” with “overjoyed.”
Sunday 15
Dear Dumb Diary,
Did you ever order a hot fudge sundae, and
when it arrived at your table you discovered that it
had a bat head in it?
That exact thing happened to me today.
Nearly that exact thing.
Isabella came over today and she had
Angeline — the bat head I spoke of earlier —
with her.
Isabella explained that since Angeline always
finishes her homework on Saturday, she is one of
the very few human beings on Earth (other than
us) that isn’t busy on Sunday.
And besides, Isabella said that she had a big
surprise that she wanted to share with both of us.
Angeline had taken the very clever step of
arriving with microwave popcorn, so I welcomed her
into my abode. (Those of us that excel in language
arts might use the word “abode” instead of
“house” when we want to remind others that they
are not as smart as we are.)
We watched a movie about this guy and girl
who hate each other at first and then realize they
are perfect for each other. During a scene that was
uncomfortably kissful, Isabella left the room.
When she came back, she said she had been
glancing casually around our kitchen and found a
pamphlet about summer school in a sealed
envelope addressed to my mom under some papers.
Isabella shook her head and said that it
looked like my mom had already decided to possibly
send me off to summer school, which made it even
harder for her to tell me her big surprise.
But she summoned her strength and told me
anyway.
Isabella’s parents are putting in a built-in
swimming pool. It’s going to have a diving
board and a slide, and we’ll be able to hang out
all summer long and have people over, and the
best part is that it also means that we can exclude
others.
I’d get started on the uninvitations already,
except that Isabella reminded me of one critical
thing:
I MIGHT BE IN SUMMER SCHOOL.
She told me not to worry. We just got back to
school and summer is still a long way off. And she
said I could still come over on the weekends — if I
didn’t have homework — and she and Angeline
would tell me everything that happened during the
week while I was in summer school learning
math and eating meat loaf and viewing
teacher flesh.
I pulled her to one side and whisperyelled
at her while Angeline read the instructions on the
microwave popcorn. I told Isabella I couldn’t
believe that she would hang around her pool with
Angeline all summer while I was being tortured in
summer school.
She whisperyelled back at me that if I wound
up in summer school, it would be my own dumb fault
and I’d have nobody to blame but myself.
I told her that was ridiculous because it had
always been my experience that you can always
find somebody else to blame.
The timer went off on the microwave and we
ate the popcorn while we watched the rest of the
movie. I was very careful to not accidentally count
the popcorns I ate, as I am currently very angry
at math.
Monday 16
Dear Dumb Diary,
One of the best ways for a teacher to tell if
his students adequately hate the material he is
teaching is to announce a surprise quiz and
listen carefully to the sounds that they emit.
This handy scale is available to all teachers,
and it reads as follows:
I’d say that overall we were about a two
today when Mr. Henzy announced the math quiz,
although I personally was definitely turning in
something closer to a four.
There were only four questions on the quiz.
When you see that, you’re briefly thankful that it’s
going to be over quickly, but you also know that if
you get just two wrong, you fail.
Mr. Henzy also always wants us to show our
work. This is just bizarre. When somebody makes you
a cake, you don’t demand that they show you the
broken eggshells and dirty spoons.
You just go, “Oh. Cake. I’ll just assume that
this contains all its ingredients. Thanks.”
I was shocked that, as I was doing the
problems, they seemed easier to me than they
ever had before. The extra work that Isabella had
put into my education (as well as three full-on
facial kicks) had really paid off.
I guess maybe I’ll be wasting my summer
around Isabella’s pool after all!
For a moment, I thought I could actually
smell my baking skin. But then I realized it was
just smoke from Angeline’s scrubby eraser
again. Guess this math stuff just doesn’t come
as easy to her.
We checked our quizzes in class, and I
am very pleased and proud to report that
I didn’t smash my head against the desk until I
was unconscious, even though that was what
I wanted to do.
&nb
sp; I got exactly ONE PROBLEM RIGHT.
Fortunately, Mr. Henzy said that these
quizzes would not be used for our grades, but they
should give us an idea of what the test will look like
at the end of the month.
Yeah, I think I have a pretty good idea of
what things are going to look like:
Tuesday 17
Dear Dumb Diary,
Today, at Isabella’s locker, we were having
a discussion about my quiz performance yesterday
and how disappointed she was that her efforts
on my education had gone to waste.
I pointed out that my grades are no concern
of hers, and that I was beginning to lose the feeling
in my neck because of how she was holding it.
And then she shouted to Angeline, halfway
down the hall, “Hey, Angeline. How did you do on
yesterday’s quiz?”
Angeline chirped with her typical chirpy
chirpiness, “I got all the questions right.”
Then Isabella leaned in close enough for me
to see myself reflected in her glasses.
“She got them ALL RIGHT, Jamie. All
of them.”
I looked past Isabella and saw Hudson and a
few others giving Angeline high fives.
They weren’t impressed with how Angeline
looked. They were impressed with how Angeline
thought.
When did this even become a thing? Since
when did we start caring how smart we are? I thought
we all agreed that we were all some sort of medium
smartness and we only made fun of the very smart
or the very dumb. And Angeline.
When did we change this??
Wednesday 18
Dear Dumb Diary,
Today in language arts, Mrs. Avon split us up
into pairs to work on descriptive sentences and I got
stuck with Angeline, who couldn’t have been happier
to have been stuck with me.
“This is going to be easy,” Angeline said as
she scooted up next to me and pulled her precious,
adorable glasses out of her purse.
“Because you’re so smart?” I asked her,
broadcasting intense nasty vibes with every
syllable. (There are five syllables in that sentence,
by the way, unless you’re one of those people
that rhymes “you’re” with “sewer” and then it’s
closer to six — and by the way, stop saying it
that way.)
“No,” she said. “Because you are.
You’re the one with the big vocabulary. You’re
vocabulicious. Is that a word?”
Angeline is not very good at lying. I’ve
seen her do it before, and she always looks a
little awkward, like somebody who is wearing
underpants they stole from you and is quite sure
that you know it.
She was telling the truth
“I’m not sure if ‘vocabulicious’ is a word, but
it should be,” I reluctantly admitted. “And I’m not
the one that got all the math questions right.”
“I think I just got lucky,” she said. “I have to
go back and check my work a million times. Plus,
Isabella has been helping me with it.”
“WAT?” I think that was the sound I
made. Or maybe it was closer to “WUT?” I meant
to say “What?” but it came out in all capitals,
and missing an h.
“She’s helping you, too, right?” Angeline
asked innocently.
I don’t remember exactly what our descriptive
sentence was, but Mrs. Avon read it aloud to the
class and she held her necklace tightly as she did.
It said something about the enamel on the
betrayed girl’s teeth splitting as she clenched them
tightly to prevent the smoldering rage in her gut
from spewing out from between her foaming lips.
It was something like that. Maybe
like that, but a little cuter. I don’t remember now.
Isabella got the message, and we talked
after class.
Isabella is pretty awesome at anticipating
questions, and responded to me before I said
anything. This is called Presponding. (I’m not
sure that’s a word, either.)
“The only way I know if I’m teaching you right
is to help both of you with math. If you both stay
morons, I know I’m doing something wrong. If only
one of you stays a moron, that means that just
you are doing something wrong.”
I had to admit that was a pretty solid point.
“Currently, you are a moron,” she added.
“And I’m not sure exactly why, but you are. As far as
math goes, you’re dumb as a marplot, Jamie, and
I’m beginning to think you’re doing it just to make
me mad.”
After dinner, I asked Dad if he had ever been
to summer school. He said that he hadn’t, and
didn’t know anything about it.
Evidently, Mom hasn’t discussed her plans
with him.
Not surprising, really. I’ve noticed that there
are several things that Mom just doesn’t discuss
with Dad:
Thursday 19
Dear Dumb Diary,
At lunch today, I secretly shared another
advanced vocabulary word with Isabella. Since she
felt like pointing out that I was a marplot at math,
I felt I should point out that she’s a marplot at
language arts.
Plus, without my help, she’s going to turn
in words like “grenade” and “chain saw” for the
Vocabulary Bee — words anybody could figure out.
I dropped a new one on her.
Prat: A stupid person.
It’s a splendid word because, like so many
splendid words, it’s deeply insulting. And it’s such
an uncommon word that we will probably be the only
two people in the whole class that know it.
The weird thing about words is that, while we
have one as useful as “prat” (which everybody
would love to use if they knew it), we also have the
words “meat loaf” (which everybody knows but
nobody ever wants to use).
And while we’re on the subject, it’s Thursday,
so it’s Meat Loaf Day — but that’s just not the
problem it used to be. I have bigger problems now.
Friday 20
Dear Dumb Diary,
I saw Hudson talking to Angeline at her
locker today, and I didn’t push her down. I am too
mature for that, as anyone can plainly see by the
purse that I maturely carry.
But as I passed, I saw her put her glasses on
and I heard Hudson say how much he liked them. I
don’t think there’s anything that says the mature
cannot become sickened.
I mean COME ON. Just because she’s
smart at math and smart at language arts and
looks smart, we’re supposed to believe that she
IS smart??
When I got home, I went straight to my room
to study.
I warned my brain that I was about to
seriously cram it full of all known mathematical
knowledge in the universe, and it was just going to
have to deal with i
t.
I opened my math book . . . and then my
mom shook me awake to come eat dinner.
Seriously. It happened that fast. I
don’t even know why police bother with tear gas
or stun guns.
Saturday 21
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella and Angeline were supposed to come
over to study today, but only Isabella showed up.
I was pretty happy about that, since I’m a
little tired of Angeline bragging about how smart
she is, even though she doesn’t come right out and
say it. When you think about it, that’s even worse.
It’s kind of like bragging about how humble she is at
the same time.
Isabella also made me choke, because when
she said Angeline didn’t come because she’s already
smart enough at math, I accidentally bit off my
pencil eraser and very nearly swallowed it.
Note to pencil manufacturers: They should
either make those erasers A: less fun to nibble,
or B: food.
My dad checked on us while we were studying,
but didn’t do his normal routine. It usually goes
like this:
Dad: Whatcha workin’ on, ladies?
Me: School stuff, Dad.
Dad: Like what?
Me: Math, Dad.
Dad: Like what kind of math?
Isabella: Can you drive us to the mall and wait
while we try on bras?
(Then he leaves because Isabella is an expert
at making dads uncomfortable.)
But he just looked in, nodded, and left. I
wonder if Dad is also becoming more mature.
I tried teaching Isabella another advanced
vocabulary word, but she says she knows my three
and that’s all she needs.
She also told me that since I was so awesome
at language arts, I could probably stop working so
hard at it. I for sure had that “secret-A” thing
that Emmily is getting.
