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Dear Dumb Diary Year Two #1: School. Hasn't This Gone on Long Enough?

Page 5

by Jim Benton


  I mean: I rock at language arts.

  Sunday 22

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Only two moms in history have ever shouted

  this at the top of their lungs in the living room:

  “Pablo Picasso! Pablo Picasso!”

  One of them was, of course, his mother, Mrs.

  Picasso. She probably had a very good reason for

  this, such as his little square-looking dog leaving

  his little cube-shaped bones all over for her to trip

  on. (She was probably prone to tripping, anyway,

  what with her backward legs and her eyes on

  sideways. At least, that’s what she looks like in

  his paintings.)

  But in MY mom’s case, she was yelling out

  the answer to some quiz show that she and my dad

  were watching on TV. (She was right: The answer was

  Picasso.)

  They were laughing and shouting and trying

  to prove to each other how smart they were about

  stuff like oceans (the Pacific is the largest), and

  how Julius Caesar was stabbed (they got him right in

  the middle of his important duties).

  I was watching them in amazement for a

  moment, enjoying themselves. Then the next

  question was “What is a mattoid?” They just

  looked at each other, and I answered the question

  without really thinking.

  “It’s an almost-insane person, like Cousin

  Felicia. Remember when she tried to train worms

  because she believed if they would just work a

  little harder, and apply themselves, they could

  be snakes?”

  The host on the TV confirmed my answer.

  Mom and Dad just sat there, staring at me for

  a moment.

  As their eye lasers beamed into my face, I

  felt the need to clarify. “I didn’t say I thought that

  worms could be snakes. Felicia did.”

  “No, no,” my mom said with a huge smile.

  “We’re just impressed. I didn’t know what the word

  meant.”

  “She’s so smart,” my dad said, grinning and

  turning his attention back to the TV.

  Huh.

  Surprisingly, it turns out that merely

  knowing something can be pleasant.

  Reaching into your head and finding an answer is

  like reaching into an old coat pocket and finding

  money you forgot about.

  I’m beginning to wonder if knowing other

  things is as pleasant. Except not math. I mean, let’s

  not push our luck here.

  Monday 23

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Dad drove me to school today, but he wanted

  to stop for a large coffee at this place that tells you

  the size in Italian if you pay them a dollar more than

  it’s worth. Grande? That will be one extra dollar,

  please.

  The coffee place had a new guy who could

  actually get Dad’s order right on the first try

  instead of after three or four tries like the old

  guy, so that meant I got to school early.

  I hate when the school is empty like that,

  because it feels very much like a scary movie

  just before something terrible starts attacking

  the pretty star of the film — and let’s face it,

  I’m pretty attackable.

  On a bench, all by herself, I spotted Angeline

  reading something so intensely I figured it must

  have been a stolen love note that was probably

  intended for somebody with browner hair.

  As I got closer, I could tell that it was just our

  math book. She seemed so interested, it made me

  think that maybe the publishers had accidentally

  included something disturbingly inappropriate.

  And then I realized that Angeline was

  cheating on our upcoming math test. Well, she was

  kind of cheating. It’s that kind of cheating where

  you write down all of the answers inside your head. I

  think some people call this “studying.”

  Can you believe it, Dumb Diary?

  Angeline wants so badly for people to

  believe that she’s smart that she is actually willing

  to really become smart just to continue the

  masquerade. Ugh.

  Tuesday 24

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Emmily emailed me directly this time.

  Dear Jmaie,

  Sorry it has taken me so long to write you.

  My new school is great but I really miss you and

  Angeline and that mean boy with the round glasses

  that you always hang around with.

  Myabe you guys can come and visit me some time

  or I can come and visit you or we can visit each

  other at some place exactly halfway between us.

  Love, Emmily

  P.S. I miss you and Angeliine and that mean boy with

  the round glasses.

  I was pretty surprised. Not that Emmily was

  remembering Isabella as a boy. (People do that

  more often than you might think.) I was surprised

  she wasn’t going on and on about her grades

  like she has in all her other letters.

  Maybe she’s just so used to being smart now

  that she’s forgotten that she is smart.

  Wednesday 25

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Today was the Vocabulary Bee. Here’s

  how Mrs. Avon set it up: We all turned in our three

  words, and then she went around the class calling

  on us, choosing words at random from the ones we

  turned in. If you couldn’t define the word, you were

  out. If you could, you stayed in.

  A few kids were taken out early, and with

  words that weren’t really that hard, like

  “stethoscope” and “catapult” and

  “chrysanthemum.”

  Mike Pinsetti’s snorts clued us in to which

  words he had turned in, although I was hardly

  surprised that he had submitted “toilet,” “toiletry,”

  and “toilet fixer guy.” (That was three words, of

  course, but Mrs. Avon just wanted to get it over

  with. By the way, the word you were struggling for,

  Pinsetti, was “plumber.”)

  I guess there were no surprises until it was

  Angeline and her glasses’ turn. Mrs. Avon asked her

  the meaning of “smatchet.” Imagine my delight

  when I realized Angeline was going to have to face

  MY words!

  Again, I had prepared my long pppfffttt.

  And Angeline answered prettily.

  “An unpleasant person.”

  I discharged only the first two pp’s in my

  pppfffttt when I realized she had it right.

  Then she got “prat” and even “mattoid”

  right. MY mattoid.

  My mind was reeling. Could she really be that

  smart? I looked at Isabella, who just threw her arms

  up in a big I Don’t Know pose.

  Then it was my turn. Easy stuff: “swindle”

  (to cheat somebody) and “incarcerated” (to

  be put in jail). Clearly, these were Isabella’s words.

  Then came “marplot.”

  “It’s a small, bad-tempered Australian

  animal,” I said.

  Mrs. Avon giggled a little.

  “Wrong,” she said.

  No, I wasn’t wrong. And I let her know.

  “It’s a small, stupid, bad-
tempered animal.

  It hunts koalas. It’s from Australia. I’ll bet you

  anything,” I protested.

  Mrs. Avon laughed.

  “That’s wrong, Jamie.”

  I asked her to double-check, and she tapped

  the word into the dictionary software on her laptop.

  She read the screen and shook her head.

  “You’re wrong, Jamie. I’m afraid you’re out.

  Anybody else want to tell us what it means?”

  “It’s a person that ruins somebody’s plans,”

  Angeline said.

  “Exactly,” Mrs. Avon said, and displayed

  about four extra inches of gums as she did.

  I felt my face go red and then the class had a

  good laugh and it went redder. Isabella gave me the

  big I Don’t Know arms again, and I had to sit

  there while Angeline went through two more rounds

  before she finally got knocked out. I don’t even

  remember who won. Either that one kid I hate

  or that other kid I hate.

  So Isabella was wrong about marplot.

  That’s to be expected, especially when it involves

  an animal. She divides the animal kingdom into

  three categories: ones you eat, ones you ride, and

  ones you throw sticks at.

  But I should have known.

  I didn’t feel embarrassed, exactly. You know

  how before I said that knowing something was like

  reaching into a pocket and finding money? This

  was like reaching into your pocket expecting money

  and finding half an old taco — and it’s not even

  your taco.

  Simply not knowing something doesn’t

  feel bad. Things you don’t know are just pockets you

  haven’t put anything in yet.

  It’s dumbness that feels bad. Dumbness is

  finding that old taco.

  I can’t write any more now, Dumb Diary. I

  have a math test to study for.

  Thursday 26

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  The big hairy math test was today. The

  numbers came at me from all sides. I remember, in

  particular, a seven that quite clearly had murder

  in its eyes.

  I felt like I got a lot of the questions right.

  Maybe even most of them.

  When I was all done, I detected a fragrance

  in the air — the smell of burning rubber. And then

  I became aware of a soft scrubbing sound.

  I looked over and saw that Angeline was

  erasing something and smiling. But I could tell

  she wasn’t even erasing a problem. She was just

  erasing on her desk.

  The eraser smell made me wonder if I should

  go back and check anything.

  So I did, and I found two things I would

  have gotten wrong. Was Angeline erasing just to

  remind me? Was she trying to remind the whole

  class? Or is she just some kind of a mattoid

  that likes to rub down erasers?

  Friday 27

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Mr. Henzy worked hard to get our math tests

  graded fast. Evidently, he has two kids at home

  that really enjoy math and like to help grade

  papers. I can hardly imagine how boring their

  dinner conversations must be.

  As Mr. Henzy was handing the graded tests

  back, I felt exactly like a prisoner in some sort of

  medieval dungeon where the main torture guy is

  walking around handing out the torture method he

  had planned for each individual.

  (I’m not sure if this is how they actually

  did it. They don’t teach us a lot about medieval

  torture at school.)

  “Here you go, son, we’ve decided to torture

  you by rubbing you with raw bacon and letting

  beagles eat you to death,” Mr. Henzy said as he

  handed one of the prisoners the paperwork

  associated with being beagled to death.

  “And for you, young man, we think that

  perhaps stapling you to the wall with our medieval

  staplers seems like a good idea. Here’s your

  paperwork.” (Medieval staplers were much larger

  back then than they are today.)

  And then Mr. Henzy, the Head Torture

  Guy, turned to me.

  “Jamie Kelly. Yes, here it is. . . .”

  “Nice work, Jamie. You pulled yourself up one

  whole letter grade with this test,” he said.

  And everybody turned to look at where the

  big celebratory WOOOO-HOOOO came from.

  For a second, I assumed it came from inside

  my mouth. But it didn’t.

  It came from inside Isabella’s. It was the first

  time Isabella ever got excited about a test — and it

  wasn’t even hers!

  I think maybe Isabella is growing up, too.

  Dinner was great. My math test wasn’t

  perfect, and my math grades aren’t perfect. But my

  parents were really impressed that I had worked

  hard enough to improve.

  I feel like a nerd admitting it, but I was

  actually kind of proud that I improved the

  grade a little. Don’t tell anyone, Dumb Diary.

  Maybe they teach us things like math to show

  us that, if we can learn something as unpleasant as

  math, we can probably learn anything.

  The grades are just there to give us an idea of

  how much of the stupid stuff we’ve learned.

  Saturday 28

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Angeline came over today. She opened her

  purse and handed me her glasses. She insisted that

  I try them on.

  “These don’t do anything for me,” I said.

  “They don’t do anything for anybody. They’re

  fake,” she confessed.

  AH-HA! She was only wearing them to try

  to look adorable! She’s not actually adorable at all!

  What a fake. Wait. She actually is adorable. What

  is . . . I don’t even understand. . . .

  Angeline could see that I was speechless.

  “Isabella asked me to wear them,” she said.

  “WAT? ”

  “It was all to keep you out of summer school.

  Isabella had this dumb idea that it would make you

  nuts if people thought I was smart. As if you’d ever

  be jealous of me,” Angeline said.

  “Yeah. Right. Like. I could. Ever. Be. Jealous

  of. You. Angeline,” I said in a totally convincing way.

  “She said that if we made you work hard

  enough, your parents wouldn’t send you to summer

  school. I was just trying to help.”

  “Isabella,” was all I could say.

  “Summer school isn’t even that bad anyway,”

  Angeline said. “I went.”

  “WAT? ”

  “School is hard for me, Jamie. I know it

  usually comes easy for you, but not for me. I have

  to study and work like crazy. You probably don’t

  notice, but I’m erasing and correcting myself all the

  time. I got way behind one year, so I took summer

  school classes to catch up. It wasn’t fun, but it’s

  not anything like Isabella says. And it helped.”

  When I finally figured out how to make my

  tongue work again, I asked why the grades were

  important to her. For a second, it looked like I had

  asked somethin
g I shouldn’t have.

  “You know what my Uncle Roy’s job is?”

  she asked.

  “It’s —” she started to tell me, and then

  she stopped herself. “Well, never mind what it is.

  He’s really smart and funny and there’s nothing

  wrong with what he does, but he always says that

  he wishes that he had worked a little harder in

  school and had been able to go to college, so he

  could have had more things to choose from. I want

  more to choose from, too.”

  So this was maturity, huh? Talking about

  career choices? Ah, yes. It was suddenly so clear

  to me why I didn’t like it.

  Angeline told me I could have the glasses if

  I wanted them, but I passed. There was no telling

  when she would need to look extra- super-

  adorable again.

  We talked more, and I discovered that

  Isabella had been quizzing her on the words for

  the Vocabulary Bee. That’s how she knew some

  of the crazy-hard words like “smatchet” and

  “prat.” And she knew what “marplot” meant.

  For some reason, Isabella had told her the real

  meaning of “marplot,” and not me.

  I thanked Angeline for helping me get a

  better math grade. Not by faking me out with

  glasses, but by sending up her little eraser smoke

  signals. She laughed and admitted that she had

  hoped it would send a message.

  As she was walking out, she stopped and

  turned in the doorway.

  “My uncle,” she said. “I don’t want you to

  think I’m ashamed of him. I love him and he does a

  great job, and I’m proud of his work — so is he. It’s

  just that he wishes he’d had more choices.”

  I told her that I understood.

  “And it doesn’t help that, a few years ago,

  some kid almost took his eye out with

  a golf ball, but that’s a long story.”

  WAT?

 

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