by Jim Benton
CHAPTER TEN
FOR ONCE I WAS WRONG
Everything costs WAY
more than I guessed and
way more than Isabella guessed, too.
It appears as though I didn’t fully understand
money. I knew only one thing for sure: There’s not
enough to go around.
When they first invented money, I’m pretty sure
old-timey people were all excited about it.
“Hey, we invented money! People are really
going to love this,” one of them correctly predicted.
“Yeah. Let’s not make enough of it,” said the
other one with a mean laugh, and that’s pretty much
how they left things.
They know that we all want it, and yet for some
messed-up reason, they won’t make enough of it.
That’s not how the guys making turkeys see
things. I can’t tell you exactly how many turkeys the
world needs, but every time I’m at the grocery store, I
see a big freezer of them wrapped up like frozen
meteors. Without even doing the math, I’m quite
confident that right this minute the world has at least
seven more turkeys than we’re ever going to need.
The guys making turkeys and the guys making
the hundred-dollar bills need to switch jobs for
a while.
That brings me back to my point: If we all had
enough money, we could each afford our own house so
that the temptation to pitch our parents out
the window when they got old wouldn’t be so
overwhelming.
Don’t get me wrong, Dumb Diary, I don’t really
want to overpower my parents and stuff them into that
burlap bag in the garage and drag them 1.35 miles to
that rest home on the corner of Maple Road and Adams
Boulevard.
I’ve never even given it a single thought.
But right after a huge Thanksgiving meal would
be a good time to get them. You know, when they’re all
fat and groggy. Right then.
I’m starting to understand why they made all
those turkeys.
We’ve always known that we needed money, and
over the years, Isabella and I have done many clever
things to earn it.
We sold lemonade at a little lemonade stand.
We sold maps to where the better lemonade
stands were.
We sold used gross
vintage clothing door-
to-door. (Sorry, Isabella’s mom. She told me that you
were going to throw it away anyway.)
We were also professional musicians
singing on a street corner, even though some imbecile
with no understanding of music sent an ambulance
to see what was wrong with us.
But these small handfuls of pocket change don’t
add up to much money at all
.
.
.
Not the kind of money Mr. Henzy was teaching
us about.
For example, you know how everybody assumes
that horses are more expensive than cars because
they’re prettier, and they can tell when you’re sad,
and they try to cheer you up by nuzzling you with their
giant heads?
Yeah, well, it turns out that’s not the case
AT ALL.
Cars ridiculously cost a TON OF MONEY
, and
if you don’t live in a place where you can walk
everywhere, like some Lord of the Rings place, there’s a
pretty good chance you’re going to need one.
Adults weirdly prefer the ugly cars.
I went to the car dealership with my dad once
and noticed that adults can actually SEE THE COOL
CARS from the desk where they’re buying the ugly
ones, but they go through with the ugly purchases
anyway.
Why, adults? Why do you choose the ugliest
version of everything all the time?
There’s also fuel, maintenance, repairs, and
insurance (which costs a bundle), and you need all of
those as well, which is just silly.
What is wrong with adults?
Mr. Henzy taught us that insurance is basically
this deal where you bet a company that you will get in
an accident, and they bet that you won’t.
They charge you every single month whether you
get into an accident or not, but if you get in one, they
pay for the damages. Now this makes it sound like
they’re pretty cool with you and your crashiness,
but after each accident, they start charging you more
and more each month for the insurance. It’s like
they’re starting to think that maybe you’re getting into
accidents on purpose, just for the attention.
If you need a loan from a bank to buy the car,
they charge you interest on the loan, and by the time
you pay them back, the car could actually cost you
almost twice what the actual price was in the
first place.
Here’s how it works: Imagine if you gave
somebody a piece of gum, and they had to give you
back two (new, unchewed) pieces the next day.
You’d get an extra piece of gum for nothing. That’s
how these loans work.
And if you didn’t pay back the extra gum on
time, they’d make sure that you could never borrow
gum from anybody ever again. Also, they might come
and take your tongue. (Truthfully, I’m really not sure
how it would work with gum. This probably only works
with money.)
And that’s just for a car.
You’re going to want someplace to live, too, and
your antique, vitamin-gobbling parents are selfishly
clinging to their house forever.
Those things cost more than I ever imagined,
and you STILL need to pay for heat, Internet, water,
Internet, electricity, Internet, and all that other junk.
And the stuff you buy eventually breaks.
Unless you have somebody like my dad, who can fix
your broken things
—
and then fix them again
because he actually made them a little worse the
first time he fixed them
—
you have to pay people to
do this.
Plus, there’s furniture and appliances and
carpet and tons of stuff that you never even heard of.
And that’s not counting the jillion little things.
Like, you’ll have to buy a brush to clean your toilet
with. Toilets don’t come with a brush, which I think
shows how bad toilet makers are at thinking ahead.
Seriously, toilet guys, did you think we were going to
serve punch in these things?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
REALLY ITCHY, LIKE PORCUPINE UNDERPANTS
One night at dinner, as I picked at Mom’s latest
Plateful of Disaster, I asked my parents, “So,
how much money do we have in the bank?”
It turns out that this is a pretty interesting
question to ask your parents at dinner. It makes them
act like their butts itch.
“Not enough,” Dad said.
“Enough,” Mom said at the exact same time, as
if they had rehearsed this.
“Why are you asking, anywa
y?” Dad said
suspiciously. “Did
Isadora tell you to ask? Is she
trying to get us to loan her money?”
“Who’s Isadora?” I said.
“Your best friend. Big round glasses. Hairy arms.
Criminal.
Isadora.”
“ISABELLA,” I said.
“Oh, right. Isabella.”
My dad does this all the time with names. I’ve
heard him call our dog “Jamie”:
“Watch where you’re walking,” he once
shouted helpfully to the guy delivering the pizza to
our front door. “Jamie pooped all over the
front yard!”
After I made him say Isabella’s name out loud
ten times, I explained that the reason I asked was for
the Personal Finance thing we’re doing in math. I told
him that we were learning how much everything costs,
and that it amazed me that we could afford
anything.
Dad smiled widely. He clearly knew that this was
one of those “teachable moments” parents are
always looking for where you leave the door on your
brain unlocked, so they can just stroll right in and
leave something there.
“Here’s the thing,” he said with a warm, fatherly
smile, “
we can’t. We can’t afford anything.”
Then he went back to eating.
I looked at Mom, and I must have appeared to be
a bit frightened.
“There’s more to it than that,” she said. “We
have a house and a car and food on the table. We have
all the things we need, and a few extras, too. Your dad
was just fooling around.”
Dad made a grunty sound that we both
recognized as the sound he makes when he disagrees
but isn’t willing to explain or argue. (We also recognize
this sound as the one Stinker’s intestines make if he
eats soap, but this time it came from Dad’s face.)
I noticed that Mom looked concerned, but at the
time, I believed it was due to her realization that she
had married a man who occasionally sounded like
beagle bowels.
There was more going on below the surface than
I knew.
(Like with beagle bowels.)
CHAPTER TWELVE
ATTACK OF THE LIVING BLOND
Angeline, you might remember, Cares About
People, which is one of the main ways she likes to
annoy them.
She cares about how they’re feeling, and how
they’re doing, and how things are going.
I SWEAR THIS IS TRUE: One time, Angeline
asked somebody how they were, and she
actually
listened to their response.
It’s not that being cared about is bad. It’s just
that those Really Caring People make you feel bad
about yourself because you’re not as caring.
Being less caring like this makes you less
annoying to others.
Being less annoying to others makes more of
them care about you. This, in turn, makes you feel even
worse because now even MORE people are more
caring than you are.
Sometimes I think you just can’t win with nice
people.
Angeline always sits with us at lunch.
Angeline could sit anywhere in the cafeteria she
wanted, and people would run and get her anything
she asked for
—
their lunches, their firstborn children,
high-priced gum in those cool packages. No sacrifices
would be too much to make to the Goddess of
Popularity.
But she sits with us.
Because she likes us,
she says.
See how annoying?
Isabella and I don’t even like us that much.
Isabella once had a theory that Angeline’s
popularity was like head lice and that we could catch it
just by being close to her. She even made Angeline
switch clothes with her at lunch one time and wear her
beautiful blond hair tucked up under a dirty hat.
Isabella wore Angeline’s clothes and a wig, but it
didn’t fool anybody. We decided that if we could bottle
and sell whatever Magical Popularity Angeline
has going for her, we’d make a fortune.
Privately, we agreed that we’d be willing to just
bottle and sell Angeline.
At some point during lunch, we became aware of
a high- pitched sound that seemed to be coming from
the direction of Angeline’s immaculately glossed lips.
It turned out that she was, in fact, talking to us.
“One of the main health issues we’re facing is
obesity,” she began, and we groaned and
slammed our heads against the table because
Angeline had lectured us about this before.
“Angeline, you’re not fat,” Isabella said, lifting
her head from the table and adjusting her glasses, then
adding,
“Yet.”
“What do you mean by that?” Angeline said. I
could tell she was a little miffed, which is about as
angry as Angeline gets.
“Angeline, you talk about obesity like it actually
affects you,” Isabella said. “
YOU
are not fat. So stop
worrying about it. You won’t be fat like your mom until
you’re her age. What is she, like, eighty-five?” Isabella
asked, and it kind of sounded like she said that last
word twice, probably due to the fact that Angeline’s
mouth had fallen open as large as the entrance of a
cave, and it was causing a mild echo.
“My mom’s not fat,” Angeline said after the
initial shock had worn off.
“Okay, okay,” Isabella said. “Your mom’s
not fat.”
Angeline nodded angrily.
Isabella added, “So who is that we see driving
you to school? Your pet elephant?”
Angeline’s mouth fell open even further than
before. With a flashlight, I might have been able to tell
what she had for breakfast.
Isabella just smiled at Angeline.
“She’s not fat, you know,” Angeline said through
gritted, pearly teeth.
“Of course she’s not,” Isabella said. “I was just
kidding. It wouldn’t matter if she was. Honestly, I can’t
think of anything that I’m less interested in than how
much people weigh. In your mom’s case, she just
happens to be as horribly perfect as you are. But
here’s the thing: When thin people like you tell fat
people that they’re fat, it doesn’t make them want to
lose weight. It makes them want to eat you thin people.
You’re just too perfect to talk about this subject.”
“I’m not talking about how people look,”
Angeline said. “I know that everybody looks different,
and sometimes it doesn’t matter much what they eat.
People can look good at every size. I’m talking about
how
healthy they are.” Angeline’s sparkling eyes
and velvety voice cut through me like sparkling,
velvety chainsaws. She eyed the can of root beer in
front of me.
“
I have an idea I want to tell you about,” she
went on.
I admit, I had gotten into the habit of bringing
cans of soda pop in for lunch. (I recently learned that
they call it POP some places, and SODA other
places. I like using the full name because it shows how
much I love it.)
I knew that soda pop wasn’t the best thing for
me. But it’s just so bubbly and refreshing, it makes you
think that the only reason that everything isn’t
carbonated is that Nature just never thought of it.
I also really enjoy burping. Burps are like
secret messages in stomach language that my
body is sending out to the world. “Hello,” my stomach
is probably saying, or “Hey, remember when you
ate this?”
And after a lifetime of dealing with my mom’s
horrible cooking, I’ve become an expert on what flavors
cancel out other horrible flavors. Root beer can cure a
lot of them, including Cafeteria Chicken Taco,
which is what they were serving that day at lunch.
Winding up in a Cafeteria Chicken Taco is pretty much
the worst thing that can ever happen to a chicken.
Chickens tell one another scary stories about it
around campfires.
This little soda pop habit of mine made me feel
like the target of every nutritional message anywhere,
but I didn’t care. Coke, Pepsi, 7Up
—
I liked them all,
and I was concerned that Angeline’s obesity idea might
impact my delicious, burpy beverages.
“And I think there may be some money in it,”
Angeline added quietly.
Isabella and I looked at each other and
blinked several times as we tried to absorb this.
Angeline was talking about doing something, not just
for the good of the world, or the good of humanity, or
the good of catnanity
—
that’s like humanity, but for
cats (it might not really be a thing). She was talking
about doing something for the
cash
.