by Jim Benton
dad broke his leg, she brought down a cake she
made that tasted like cigarettes. She has a little
dog we call Smokey because every time he barks, he
coughs and then spits something out.
42
“One, please,” she said, and handed me a
quarter that smelled like cigarettes.
Angeline picked up a cup and tilted the
pitcher, then tilted it more and more. Nothing
came out. Isabella grabbed the empty cup from
her hand and gave it to Cigarette Grandson.
“Here you go,” she said.
“But it’s empty,” he said.
“Yeah. It’s the cup that costs a quarter,”
Isabella said. “The lemonade was free while
supplies lasted, but the supply ran out.”
43
I handed Cigarette Lady back her quarter.
“Just kidding,” I said. “I guess we sold out. Try back
tomorrow.”
Cigarette Grandson was crushed. I think when
he stays there, his grandmother almost never takes
him out, and the inside of her house has the aroma
of an active volcano. We watched them walk
back home. A few minutes after they went inside,
we couldn’t smell them anymore.
“What happened to all the lemonade?” I asked.
“Angeline drank it a little bit at a time when
the two of us weren’t looking,” Isabella said quickly,
adding, “I have to use your bathroom again.”
Isabella ran inside, and Angeline and I
started gathering up the lemonade stand stuff.
“I did not,” Angeline said. She smiled
pleasantly, which is exactly the kind of smile you
want to push down somebody’s throat at a moment
when she probably single - handedly destroyed your
lemonade stand / restaurant.
Dad told me not to worry about paying him
back for the stuff we bought, but Mom reminded us
that I had to, because that was the deal I made. Hey,
way to go, Mom, with that memory thing, for the first
time in history when Dad’s not being a cheapskate.
Monday 09
Dear Dumb Diary,
I truly believe I could solve everybody’s
problems if they would do just one simple thing:
Everything I say.
Today on the phone, Angeline and I went over
our follow-up plan for the lemonade stand. Isabella
couldn’t come over because she drank too much of
something yesterday —but it wasn’t lemonade —
and she still felt a little sick.
I told Angeline about these books I read
where the girls were babysitters and I think they
also solved crimes. I thought it would be a great
idea if we raised money by babysitting and/or
solving crimes.
44
45
Here were my points:
1) Who doesn’t love little kids? Parents,
that’s who. And that’s why babysitters are
always in demand.
2) It is probably not that hard because all of
the babysitters in the books have plenty
of extra time to solve crimes and have
crushes and be rock stars.
3) Angeline cannot drink a child, so she won’t
screw up our business.
Angeline objected to the child-drinking
reference because it’s important to her to continue
to deny that she stole our lemonade. Whatever. I’m
past that.
46
I tossed out a name for our babysitting
service, which I think is brilliant: Baby-o-
tastical- abulous. Angeline didn’t really
respond to it one way or another (envy can make a
person speechless), but she said that babysitting
isn’t always as easy as you think. Then I asked her
how she knew, and my penetrating line of crime-
solving-babysitter questioning forced her to
confess something:
She DOES babysit sometimes.
I know, right? Behind our backs, while we’re
trying to maintain the Baby- o -tastical-abulous
babysitting service and children’s boutique, she’s
competing with us!
I know she felt guilty about it because she
said she’d ask her mom’s friend if she needs a
babysitter this week. If she does, the three of us
can babysit her client together at Angeline’s house.
I called Isabella with the news. She was
really excited about the whole idea except for the
babysitting part. Babies don’t really like Isabella
for some reason, and I don’t know why. My theory
is that it’s the smell of the soap she uses, or the
reflections on her glasses, or maybe they’re just not
very tolerant of people who yell at babies.
Anyway, Isabella finally agreed and even
came up with a great idea of taking pictures of
us to use in flyers to advertise Baby-o- tastical-
abulous, which is the name of our company even
though Angeline and Isabella believe it is not.
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I was so excited when Angeline called.
Now THAT’S a sentence I never thought I
would be capable of writing. Unless it went on to
say: . . . out helplessly from the bottom
of an elevator shaft.
Tomorrow morning we actually get to babysit
at her house! Her mom’s friend is going to leave her
one- year-old in our official care for about three
hours. I have to get to sleep now so that we can
begin our exciting new career tomorrow.
But before I do, maybe I’ll just sketch out a
few of the baby fashions I expect we’ll soon be
offering in our boutique.
49
Tuesday 10
Dear Dumb Diary,
Okay, Dumb Diary, before I tell you about
today, I need to make one point very clear: As
always, nothing is my fault.
We showed up at Angeline’s house just before
eleven and met Angeline’s mom’s friend, Mrs.
Twining, and her little boy, Ricky. Ricky is the
very fat one- year- old individual that we were
contracted to babysit.
Angeline has babysat Fat Ricky several times
before, and could have easily handled the whole
thing while Isabella and I watched TV. But that
didn’t really seem to be in the spirit of what we
wanted to do when we launched Baby- o- tastical-
abulous Vegetarian Day Care and Boutique. I mean:
We all needed to play a part.
Babies, like people, need to be fed, and given
beverages, and according to Angeline, they want to
play. So Isabella and I sat down on the floor and
played with Ricky while she got his lunch ready.
We weren’t quite sure how to do it, so Isabella
poked him a few times to see if he liked that. He
didn’t. I let him play with my shoe, and he was
perfectly happy until Angeline came in and pulled it
out of his mouth. That makes me doubt if she really
knows what makes children happy. Our organization
should review her credentials.
50
51
Perhaps out of anger at Angeline for taking
his fa
vorite shoe- toy away from him, Ricky
stinkfully performed a dirty diaper.
I have spent a lot of time around BFO
(Beagle Fart Odor), so Ricky’s smell did not
instantly murder me, although an extended period
of time in his odor cloud would have massacred us
all. I wondered if it was possible for Ricky to have
somehow eaten several dozen beagle farts, but I’m
not sure that’s even possible.
Angeline held her nose and said she’d take
care of it, but luckily for her, Isabella was there to
help out. Isabella is very difficult to disgust due
to the fact that her mean older brothers have
subjected her to a lifetime of grossness.
“I know what to do,” she said, and took Ricky
into the other room. “C’mon, Ricky. Let’s put a fresh
diaper on you.”
Angeline looked a little concerned, but I
pointed out that Isabella actually had little cousins
of her own and knew how a diaper was operated.
52
After that, we gave Ricky lunch, which was
pretty funny because when Isabella put her
sunglasses on him, he looked a lot like her grandpa
and how he eats.
We all started laughing really hard and that
made Ricky laugh, too. So hard, in fact, that he
started to stink again, also like Isabella’s grandpa.
(Nobody in her family is allowed to tell him jokes.)
So Isabella just picked up Ricky and whisked
him away. “Let’s put a fresh diaper on you,” she
said. Angeline and I were surprised that she wasn’t
really very angry about it.
53
For the next two hours, we were actually a
pretty good team. Angeline would tell me how
to play with Ricky, I would do the actual non- shoe
playing, and whenever Ricky started smelling icky,
Isabella would take him into the next room and put
a fresh diaper on him.
I never knew that babies needed so many
diapers. Angeline said it was pretty unusual for
Ricky to go through seven diapers in three hours,
but maybe he had a big breakfast or something.
Anyway, Baby-o- tastical -abulous looked like
a huge success, based on projections I did using the
math that teachers always said I would need in
the Real World. Mrs. Twining was sure to tell her
friends how great we were, and I figured we would
have a whole ranch full of babies to sit before you
knew it.
Hello, Screamotopia !
When Angeline’s mom and Mrs. Twining finally
got back to Angeline’s, everybody was really happy
because we were going to get paid and Ricky was
still in one piece and we were going to get paid.
54
Ricky started bouncing around and began to
stink again. Isabella said, “No worries. I’ll put a
fresh diaper on him before we go.”
Mrs. Twining laughed and said, “Oh, don’t be
silly. Your job is done, girls. I’ll change his diaper.”
She picked him up and walked into the other room,
After about a minute, she called Angeline’s
mom to come in.
Then they walked little Ricky out. All he had
on were his diapers.
All eight of them.
He was wearing the one he wore over to
Angeline’s, plus the seven that Isabella had layered
on. We didn’t notice because, as I mentioned
earlier, Ricky is on the tubby side of fat.
55
Aaaaaand we’re not getting the endorsement
from Mrs. Twining I’d hoped for.
Isabella said she knew that she was supposed
to change Ricky’s diapers, but it occurred to her
that if she just covered the dirty one with a fresh
one it would lock in the stink, and wasn’t that the
point anyway? (When you think about it, she was
pretty much right.)
When the stink started leaking out, Isabella
got the impression that Ricky was kind of messing
with her, so she kept adding layers. She asked Mrs.
Twining if she ever got that impression about Ricky,
or if Ricky maybe had a bad attitude or
something.
It got a little worse from there, and we got a
lecture from Mrs. Twining about how important it is
to take care of babies properly, and Isabella got a
little angry and said it wasn’t our fault that her kid
poops his pants.
56
In the end, we did get paid, which was
a relief because at one point somebody said
something about somebody’s baby looking like an
ape. See, this is all about timing: You should always
wait to tell the mom her baby looks like an ape until
AFTER you get paid, because the ape observation
(though accurate) probably cost us our tip. Still, we
pulled in twenty dollars, which means that when
we subtract what I owed my dad we have, like, ten
dollars now. That’s PURE PROFIT.
But I don’t think we’re going to babysit in this
town again. So now that Baby- o- tastical- abulous is
officially closed, we need a new line of work. Ten
dollars won’t buy you much amusement at an
amusement park.
57
Wednesday 11
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella was in no mood to work on our
amusement park goal today. She said she had
determined that there would be a brief period of
time where her brothers would be out of the house
and her mom would be in the yard, and she
planned to use that twelve and a half minutes to
go online.
It’s not like she’s NEVER allowed to go
online, in spite of an attempt when she was four to
break the Internet out of revenge, after her
mean older brothers showed her a video that scared
the cupcakes out of her.
58
The good news is that you can’t break
the Internet, no matter how many feet of cable you
manage to drag out of the wall.
The bad news (according to Isabella) is
that you can’t break the Internet, no matter how
many feet of cable you manage to drag out of
the wall.
She says that she just prefers to go online
privately, when there’s nobody around to interrupt
her with little distractions like being grounded for
going online.
59
Angeline called to say she was going to be
babysitting Icky Ricky again today, but Mrs. Twining
specifically said that she wanted ONLY Angeline on
the job. I believe that Angeline was telling the truth
about Mrs. Twining, because Angeline probably
blamed the multi- diapering on Isabella instead of
accepting some of the blame herself for NOT
telling Isabella that Mrs. Twining had some sort of
weird thing against diaper layering.
I’m not sure how I feel about Angeline taking
advantage of the good name of Baby -o -tastical-
abulous behind our backs (even though she did it in
front of our faces and isn’t using the n
ame), and I
told her so.
She said she’d be willing to put her earnings
from babysitting into the mutual AMUSEMENT
PARK FUND, but that she was doing this one for
free to make it up to Mrs. Twining for the multi-
diapering incident.
That seemed fair to me. When I called
Isabella it seemed fair to her, too, after forty
minutes of arguing.
60
I ran a new moneymaking plan past my mom
this morning, but here’s something I’ve noticed
about my mom: She SAYS that she likes the idea of
me making my own money, but when it’s time for her
to prove it — like when I told her I’d clean my room
for twenty dollars — she doesn’t come through.
And here’s the thing: She’s seen my room. She
KNOWS that twenty dollars is a bargain. She even
got angry when I told her that I could offer her a
light room cleaning at five dollars off my regular
low low price.
61
When Dad got home, I ran some new
moneymaking ideas past him. He said he’d think
about them, which is Dad Language for “I will
not be thinking about these.”
He also said something about just giving me
the money, but Mom walked in and he got real quiet.
62
Thursday 12
Dear Dumb Diary,
This morning, my mom said that she’d pay us
to wash her car today. That gave me a terrific
idea: What if I just waited until it rained and then
charged her for that? That’s really about the same
thing, right?
She said it wasn’t the same, so I got another
terrific idea.
“What if Angeline and Isabella and I washed
cars in the driveway today?” I said. I suggested we
charge fifty dollars per car.
Mom said that people can get their cars
washed at the regular old car wash for five bucks.
So MAYBE they’d be willing to spend $4.50 on ours,
you know, just because adults love to help kids.
I’m not sure how chiseling us out of fifty