by Jim Benton
More of Jamie Kelly’s diaries
LET’S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED
MY PANTS ARE HAUNTED!
AM I THE PRINCESS OF THE FROG?
NEVER DO ANYTHING, EVER
Jim Benton
PUFFIN
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in the USA by Scholastic Inc. 2004
Published in Great Britain in Puffin Books 2011
Text and illustrations copyright © Jim Benton, 2004
The moral right of the author/illustrator has been asserted
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-141-33582-7
For
the misunderstood
Special thanks to:
Julie Kane-Ritsch and Carole Postal along with all the punks at Scholastic, including: Martha Atwater, Maria Barbo, Steve Scott, Susan Jeffers Casel and Shannon Penney
Dear Whoever Is Reading My Dumb Diary,
Are you sure you’re supposed to be reading somebody else’s diary? Have you done this before? If I did not give YOU permission, YOU had better stop right now.
If you are my parents, then, YES, I know that I am not allowed to call people idiots and fools and goons and half-wits and gerds and all that, but this is a diary, and I didn’t actually “call” them anything. I wrote it. And if you punish me for it then I will know that you read my diary, which I am not giving you permission to do.
Now, by the power vested in me, I do promise that everything in this diary is true, or at least as true as I think it needs to be.
Signed,
PS: If this is you, Angeline, reading this, then you are officially busted. I happen to have this entire room under hidden video surveillance. And, in just a moment, little doors will slide open and flesh-eating rats will stream into the room. And, like tiny venomous cowboys, scorpions will be riding the rats. So it’s curtains for you, Angeline! Mwah-hah-hah-hah!
PPS: If this is you, Margaret or Sally, then HA-HA — you are also caught in my surveillance sting.
PPPS: If this is you, Isabella, don’t you ever get tired of reading my diary? I mean, I’ve caught you doing it, like, nine or ten times, so just STOP IT. Seriously. Maybe you should see somebody about this.
Table of Contents
Sunday 01
Monday 02
Tuesday 03
Wednesday 04
Thursday 05
Friday 06
Saturday 07
Sunday 08
Monday 09
Tuesday 10
Wednesday 11
Thursday 12, 3:45 AM
Friday 13
Saturday 14
Sunday 15
Monday 16
Tuesday 17
Wednesday 18
Thursday 19
Friday 20
Saturday 21
Sunday 22
Late-Breaking Thoughts
Monday 23
Tuesday 24
Wednesday 25
Thursday 26
Friday 27
Sunday 01
Dear Dumb Diary,
Mom and I got into a “discussion” about fashion after dinner tonight. Of course, she really has no idea what the trends are at my school. I told her that I think she can’t possibly know how important trends can be, and she said that clothes were just as important when she was in middle school. Then I said that I understood how she probably always tried her best to make a good impression on Fred and Wilma and Barney and the whole gang down at the tar pit, but times had changed.
And that’s just part of the reason I’m here in my room way ahead of schedule for the evening. Here’s the exchange that followed my Mom-Is-Old-As-Cavemen joke:
“Just how do you think that makes me feel?” Mom asked.
“Stupid?” I guessed.
Turns out that Mom had a different answer in mind, and I’ll have a little time to figure out what it was since I’m here in my bedroom about five hours earlier than usual.
I also think that Dad sitting there trying not to laugh might have made things worse.
Sometimes diaries can be so much easier to talk to than moms. I can’t picture Mom letting me write on her face, and I imagine sliding a bookmark in somewhere would result in a major wrestling match.
Monday 02
Dear Dumb Diary,
Angeline is back to her old tricks, Dumb Diary.
Yeah, sure, for a long time, everything was fine between us. (Nearly four whole days — except two of those were over the weekend, during which I did not see her.) But then today, in science class, while I was talking to Hudson Rivers (eighth cutest guy in my grade), she performed an act of UTTER BEAUTY and distracted him.
Actually, I hadn’t started to talk to him yet, but I was going to, and she should have known that when she whipped out her GORGEOUSNESS and waved it all over the place.
It’s true. I may not be fully qualified to talk to Hudson Rivers. Maybe he is just slightly too cute for me. (I’m right on the edge of adorable.) But if I’m really, really lucky and keep my fingers crossed, he could become mildly disfigured. Then we’d be on the same level, and I want to make sure I’m ready should that blessed maiming occur.
And, besides, Angeline is in that Mega-Popular category where she can probably go and work her wicked charms against boys like Chip, who is the number-one cutest boy in the school.
So why does she always have to perform acts of Beauty around Hudson?
(Chip, like Madonna and Cher and Moses, only goes by his first name. I’m not sure anybody knows what his last name is.)
Tuesday 03
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella came by after school to root through my magazines for those little paper perfume samples. She’s got a top-secret fragrance project she’s working on. It’s connected to her ongoing obsession with Popularity, I
’m sure of it. Isabella is kind of an expert on Popularity, or so she says. (I know: Isabella belongs in a cage. But she is my best friend, So One Does What One Must.)
I looked every where before I finally found my magazines. Get this: they were in my parents’ room. Hmmm! Looked like Mom had been flipping through them. I wonder if she’s planning to do some sort of makeover on herself.
I heard about this girl whose mom had a makeover done on herself, and it was so good that afterwards the mom looked younger and hotter than the daughter, which made her feel so guilty that she decided to have the makeover unmade. But when the cosmetologists tried to undo what had been done they said that her body had absorbed the makeover, and now she was permanently afflicted with Hotness.
So her daughter came down with a form of Embarrassment that has to be treated by doctors.
Honestly, I’m not terribly worried about Mom having a makeover. She can hardly makeover a bed.
Wednesday 04
Dear Dumb Diary,
Here are what some people think are the worst things about my school:
The worst thing about school is my science class. I like the idea of science. I mean, it comforts me to know that Angeline’s guts are no more glorious or appealing than the stuff you’d scoop out of a porcupine.
But it’s the whole chemistry part of it that I hate, like “this-kind-of-stuff-can-burn-through-this-junk”, and “when-you-mix-this-with-that-then-whatever-will-explode”. Science just doesn’t seem to have much to do with what I’m trying to accomplish in my life right now, which is mainly the avoidance of science.
At least Hudson Rivers is in my class. Isabella and I sometimes exchange scientific observations on Hudson.
Thursday 05
Dear Dumb Diary,
Tonight at dinner I realized that I am, once again, the youngest person in my family. My beagle, Stinker, was once younger than me, but by employing the totally unfair dog trick of ageing seven years in just twelve months, Stinker went from peeing on the carpet to being old enough to drive in just a couple of years. He is the only member of my family who has ever accomplished such an amazing feat, except I think I have an uncle who might have done it, too.
It is for this reason that I decided not to give Stinker my table scraps after dinner this evening. (Not because my uncle peed, but because Stinker made me the baby of the family again.)
This really made Stinker mad. Tonight, dinner was Chinese food — almost a beagle’s favourite meal. (I wonder what they call Chinese food in China. They probably just say, “Here. Here’s some of that food we always have.”)
Friday 06
Dear Dumb Diary,
The vengeful beagle strikes again. To get back at me for not giving him my table scraps, Stinker ate a huge hole out of the backside of my only clean pair of jeans. (The second-best pair in the collection.) I know he would say he had to do it because he was so hungry from not having his normal gutful of table scraps, but I know that he did it out of revenge.
How can I be so sure Stinker made the hole? It was in the most embarrassing place possible and it was PERFECTLY round. It looked like a tailor had chewed it.
So, I had to go with a pair of khaki pants that really had no business being out on a Friday. They’re a Sunday pair of khakis. Sure, they started as a Friday pair of pants, but as cooler pants were purchased the khakis were demoted.
I paired them with a shirt that was a serious Friday shirt, hoping to boost the khakis’ confidence and give them the feeling that maybe they were somehow becoming more fashionable. It totally worked, of course, as pants are really stupid. You would think that a pair of khakis would notice that, currently, the most popular pants at my school are jeans, faded to just the right shade of blue.
Of course, I don’t have any jeans that are the perfect shade of blue. If I awoke one morning to discover that I had a pair that WAS the right shade of blue, I would just assume that they weren’t my pants, it wasn’t my house and it wasn’t me who had just woken up.
Saturday 07
Dear Dumb Diary,
The most incredible thing happened today. Isabella and I saw Angeline, but not at school. It’s always so weird when you know somebody only from school, but then you see them in the real world. It’s like when you walk in on a clown, and he’s only wearing his underpants. (Long story: bad birthday party experience. Don’t like clowns any more.)
Anyway, Angeline was in the park, and she was playing with these two little kids who Isabella and I figured were her little sisters. But the little sisters did not have Angeline’s great looks (nobody cares anyway, Angeline!), thereby verifying what we have always just suspected about Angeline: SHE’S BEEN PLASTIC-SURGEONED. Probably nothing on her is an original part.
It would cost a fortune to do that much plastic surgery on somebody who started out as ugly as we hope Angeline did, so we figure that Angeline’s dad is some big doctor.
On top of everything else, she’s probably RICH.
Just when I thought I knew everything there was about Angeline that bugged me, it turns out she’s also loaded.
Sunday 08
Dear Dumb Diary,
It’s Sunday. Also known as Homework Day. Every weekend I tell myself that I’m going to finish my homework when I get home on Friday afternoon, and then I tell myself I’m going to do it Saturday morning, and then I tell myself I’ll do it Saturday night, and then I tell myself to get off my back, and why am I always nagging myself, and then I call myself a name and have to apologize to myself.
And then I have to do all my homework on Sunday.
Tomorrow is school and I can’t risk another wardrobe-munching by Stinker, so I gave him table scraps from dinner.
Monday 09
Dear Dumb Diary,
Okay. Who wants to buy a beagle cheap? Remember the other night we had Chinese food? Stinker didn’t get any scraps and that’s why he ate my pants.
Last night I gave him scraps, but Mom had cooked some sort of Goo Casserole and it had somehow slipped my mind that few living things except bacteria enjoy my mom’s cooking. (Mom is a good mom and everything, but she’s not very good at traditional mom things, like cooking and cleaning and washing clothes.) So guess what Stinker did?
It looks like Stinker quietly crept through the house, carefully sorted through the laundry Mom had just done, found the absolute best-looking pair of jeans I own, and ate an even bigger hole. Through the front this time!
Does anybody know why dogs do the things they do? I think they might do some of them (like you-know-what) just to see if they can get their picture in the newspaper for being the GROSSEST DOG ON EARTH. But why Stinker is gnawing through my pants is anybody’s guess.
I could propose the question in science class, except it would draw attention to my pants and I had to wear khakis again today.
Our science class works like this: everybody has a lab partner. A lab partner is a person that you do all the experiments with while you both wish the other one was Sally Winthorpe, who is this really smart girl who probably has a brain for every single organ in her body, because she’s sort of tiny and her head is just not big enough to fit that much smartness in. Although I’m not sure what being that smart can get you.
Sally was Isabella’s partner for a long time, but then they got switched. Of course now she’s Angeline’s partner, so I’m sure Angeline never has to do any work. Which, added to the whole being loaded thing, really kind of bites.
For now my lab partner is Isabella — whose head is plenty big — but there’s a chance she’s using part of it for a lunch box or laundry hamper. She has been conducting this top-secret science experiment involving collecting every single one of those perfume sample cards that they put in magazines, and combining them into one massive SUPERFRAGRANCE that she says will smell as good as every known good smell in the Universe, combined. She has been doing this in science class because she already has about sev
enty of them crammed in an old baby food jar she’s kept hidden in a cabinet in the science room. Just taking the lid off the thing to stuff another one in requires her to wear the science-class safety glasses.
Isabella has been having a sinus problem, so she can hardly smell at all. But without the glasses she says the vapour could still blind her for life.
Angeline and her genius partner, Sally, spotted us doing a perfume deposit today. Angeline, though beautiful and therefore fundamentally evil, didn’t tattle. Call her conceited. Call her stuck-up. Call her self-centred. I mean it. Somebody go get the phone and call her.
But the truth is that she could have squealed but didn’t. My theory is that at Angeline’s lofty level of MEGA-POPULARITY, a snitcher is frowned upon. (At one point I thought I might have even seen her smile a little, but I’ve seen crocodiles do the same thing, so I can’t be sure what it means.)
Tuesday 10
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella’s sinus problem is still bugging her. She can’t smell anything. She says her sinuses are bad enough that she could park in disabled spaces if she were old enough to drive. Since she isn’t, she says that the law allows her to just stand in them.