by Jim Benton
know that they’re going to stay there. They’re not
just going to wander off. When somebody dies, it’s
like the only time you can’t lose them.
Angeline called it “passing away,” as in,
“Sorry your grandma passed away.”
But that sounds a little strange to me, too. It
sounds like “faded away,” and if anything, my
grandma did anything but fade as she got older. If
you asked Grandma to wear something nice, you
needed sunscreen to protect yourself from the
brightness. I’ve studied the old-timey photos, and
my theory is that old people dress in colorful outfits
to compensate for all the time they spent in black
and white as children.
Anyway, I’ve been using the word “died,”
because that’s what she did. All the other ways
make it seem like I’m trying to make it sound not
so bad.
But it is bad. I know that, even if some
people try to act like it isn’t.
I’m not stupid: If dying isn’t bad, why are
ambulances in such a hurry all the time?
Hudson said something about my grandma, too.
I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned Hudson
Rivers to you before, Dumb Diary. He’s the eighth
cutest boy in my school. Maybe even seventh
now, as boy number four went on vacation and
made some questionable decisions about
getting cornrows put in his hair. This, I think we
can all agree, has affected his rating. As a rule
of thumb, cornrows only work reliably on:
A. Corn.
B. People who look good with cornrows.
C. And that’s it.
The rest of you, no. Just. Don’t.
Anyway. Hudson said something. It was
probably nice. I don’t remember. I’m not
concentrating very well these days. Sometimes
I feel like the entire world is like one of those
lessons about an early explorer who discovered
something like one of the larger hills in Ohio. You
know it will probably be on the test, but you just
can’t make yourself care.
WEDNESDAY 11
Dear Dumb Diary,
I opened the box of Grandma’s things today.
There were some old photos of her and my grandpa
together, and some photos of her when she was
about my age.
People used to dress nicer back then. Honestly,
if we don’t have to dress up for something, my
family usually looks like a group of scarecrows
that doesn’t get invited to the places the nicer
scarecrows go.
I wanted to ask her, “Why did you all used to
dress so nice, Grandma?”
But then I thought, Oh. Right. You
can’t give me answers anymore.
There were some pictures of my grandpa,
too — some from when he was a boy about my age,
and some from when he was the same age as my dad.
He looked really tough, maybe even a little
scary.
Back then, men like Grandpa would just go
out back and kick a few dozen trees out of the
ground and build a house from them using only their
fists and a rusty saw with one tooth in it.
My dad, on the other hand, sometimes can’t
open a folding chair without pinching a finger off.
I wanted to ask him, “What made you so
different, Grandpa? Why were you guys all so tough
all the time?”
And then I thought, Oh. Right. You
can’t give me answers anymore, either.
When people die, it’s like they set the phone
down while you’re talking to them, and they never
pick it up again.
There was a necklace in the box that I’ve
decided to wear for a while. It’s pretty ugly, but I
believe people really used to like ugly things. I don’t
think they had as much makeup back then, and the
idea was probably that if you wore an ugly necklace,
your face would look prettier in comparison.
It makes me think that if I wore Stinker
around my neck, I could be on the cover of a
magazine.
It’s an interesting strategy, but I think I’ll
wear the necklace under my shirt. If Mom sees it,
it might make her cry, and not just because of its
ugliness.
Oh.
One other little thing.
I found my grandma’s diary in with her stuff.
I’m thinking about reading it.
THURSDAY 12
Dear Dumb Diary,
Okay. I know that I might sometimes give the
impression that I don’t want anybody to read my
diary, although it probably would be okay with me. I
don’t know. I haven’t given it much thought.
But don’t you think that my grandma would
want me to read her diary? Look, here’s what it
said on the first page:
“To whomever is reading my diary without my
permission: DO NOT CONTINUE READING. I wish
upon you a thousand curses and a thousand more.
Stop now, before you violate my privacy any further.”
See what I mean? It’s not exactly clear.
You could take that a lot of ways. I think what she’s
saying is that I can read it only if I have permission.
And if I didn’t have permission, wouldn’t she
have burned it long ago? That’s really the only way
somebody can totally deny you permission.
She could have always thrown it into a
volcano. I get the impression that there were a lot
of volcanoes in those olden times, although I might
be thinking all the way back to cavemanny
times.
The fact that I have the diary in my possession
AT ALL is obviously permission to read it in exactly
the same way that I CAN’T read things I don’t have.
Case closed.
Prettiest. Lawyer. Ever.
FRIDAY 13
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella was upset at school today. She
admitted that she’s been thinking about my
grandma a lot.
See, some people think Isabella is unkind
because of how she used to scare little kids out
of their Halloween candy, but they don’t stop to
consider the good Isabella did for the families of
the psychiatrists who will treat those kids all the
way into adulthood.
And they think she was mean for throwing
apples at that crabby old retired guy who always
yelled at us for walking on his lawn, but they don’t
ever say anything about how that lucky old guy got
a TON of free apples. And also four free eggs.
And they think it was wrong of her to make up
a story about her mean older brothers and tell the
police that they —
Okay, well, she did give that guy free apples.
Anyway, I know Isabella and I know that
Isabella is kind. This was made even clearer to
me when I saw how sensitive she was about my
grandma.
Isabella said she has started to worry that,
one day, she might be too old to do certain things.
She was afraid that she could die and leave
behind
a lot of people without telling them how lame
they were.
Isabella said quietly, perhaps even holding back
tears, “I don’t want anybody left unpunched.”
She asked if I knew anybody that my grandma
might have meant to abuse or scratch or something,
but never got around to it.
“Or maybe there was a bed of flowers she
wanted trampled, or somebody’s lawn wrecked?
Maybe some hair that should have been pulled?”
See? Isabella’s TOTALLY kind.
I told her that I had no way of knowing.
Unless.
Unless we looked in my grandma’s diary.
If you ever find yourself facedown, staring at
the floor of the school hallway, it could be because
you also gave Isabella a reason to suspect there
was something in your backpack that she wanted
AND you had neglected to take the essential step
of removing your backpack before you made her
suspect that. Rookie mistake.
After some rummaging around, she was
finally convinced that the diary wasn’t in there. I
explained that I had it at home, but I hadn’t read
past the first page because it said that nobody
should read any further.
By “explained,” I mean “grunted.” She
was still sitting on my back.
That’s when I learned that I was inviting
Isabella over for dinner.
And into my room.
And into my grandma’s diary.
I told you that people used to dress differently
than we do now. But I may not have mentioned that
they used to write differently, too.
First off, they wrote more in cursive, because
supposedly it’s a faster way to write, even though
every single other thing in their whole entire world
was slower. Hey, old-timey writers, what was the
big rush?
“I have to hurry up and finish writing this so
I can go sit on the front porch and churn butter
without an Internet and watch old-fashioned people
walk slowly past in their absurdly clunky shoes.”
But let me get back to the cursive writing
thing. Have a look at this sentence here:
It says, “Quick, let’s buy some zebras.” That
thing that looks like a 2 at the beginning is actually
the letter Q.
Hey, old-timey Letter Inventors, why
did you write it that way? Hadn’t any other shapes
been invented yet?
I’m sure they must have sat around saying,
“What should the letter Q look like? How about if we
just use the number 2? Hardly anybody ever uses a
2 anyhow.”
The only reason I can read cursive is that my
grandma used to send me long letters and Mom
made me read them. Isabella never learned cursive,
so she can only read some of the words, which
frustrates her and is one of the reasons she says
she now hates everybody from history. (Also, she
hates them because they want to be studied by us.)
“And if those old documents were so
important, they would have typed them,” she says.
But I’ll give you a break, Dumb Diary, and I’ll
write my grandma’s diary entries out in a way you
can understand.
Here’s something else that was different.
Grandma didn’t name people in her diary — she
used their initials. I’ve seen this in other old-timey
writings, too.
She wrote that she had a crush on somebody
that she called M.B. She didn’t even put his name —
she just used his initials. She must have been worried
about some nosy person getting in her diary and
reading it. How paranoid can you get, Grandma?
OMG, nobody is going to read your precious diary.
Relax.
I wish I had thought of that.
Here’s the first entry:
I saw M.B. at school today, looking as
wonderful as ever. I was prepared to start up a
conversation, but just as I approached, A.S. slid in
and the two of them began laughing and talking. I felt
as though I had just faded away.
Isabella and I agreed that it’s exactly like
something we would write, except that Isabella
would have probably pushed A.S. down and I might
have slid a piece of salami through one of her locker
vents just before a long weekend.
I wanted to yell at her diary, “C’mon,
Granny, stick up for yourself!”
Here’s what another one of the entries said:
Big dance coming up soon. I sure hope I get
to dance with M.B. Nothing in my life is more important
to me. Hope A.S. isn’t there.
And then it hit me. It sounded EXACTLY
like something I would write. And it made me feel a
little sick that Grandma was back there, in the past,
wasting the time that I know she doesn’t have an
infinite amount of, since I’m here in her future and I
know— well, I know that she doesn’t have any time
left at all now.
I closed the diary and wouldn’t let Isabella
read any more.
Instead, we talked for a while in the dark
about the things all girls talk about — music, and
boys, and how Angeline will be ugly when she grows
up, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that entry in
Grandma’s diary.
It was so dumb. All she was thinking about
was some dumb dance.
Like the ones I dumbly think about.
Like the one that’s dumbly coming up.
Am I dumb, too? Am I back here right now,
in my own past, being dumb? And are you reading
this right now, granddaughter of mine, thinking
I’m dumb?
Well, stop it. It’s disrespectful of your old
Granny. Go spank yourself.
Unless they have robots for that now. Go tell
your Spankbot to spank you.
SATURDAY 14
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella demanded to read one more of
Grandma’s diary entries before she went home this
morning. It’s hard to resist when she gives you her
puppy-dog-eye thing.
Her puppy-dog-eye thing goes like this:
“Do what I say or I’ll poke your puppy dog in
the eye,” she says.
So I read her the next entry:
How do I stand a chance against that beautiful
hair and those big brown eyes? Sometimes I imagine
that a circus elephant would just sit on A.S., and it
makes me feel a little bit ashamed of myself, and a bit
angry with myself, and a bit fond of elephants, and a
bit interested in knowing when the circus is next coming
to town.
“Where did your grandma go to school?”
Isabella asked.
I told her that I had no idea. She wanted
to ask my mom, but I pointed out that if we did, my
mom would probably take the diary away from me,
since I’m sure she wouldn’t want us to read it.
“Remember? That’s what happened when
you asked her if she knew how to get hair spray off a
beagle,�
� I reminded her.
Then I remembered that there was more
stuff in the box that Aunt Carol brought over, so we
dug through it until we found some of Grandma’s
old report cards. All A’s in art. Guess it runs in
the family.
Isabella squinted at the fine print.
“Got it. Walker Middle School,” she said. “It
says it’s in Hazel Heights. I wonder if it’s still there.”
I asked Isabella why she wanted to know, and
she told me to mind my own business. I pointed out
that business-minding was exactly the opposite
of what we were doing, and she agreed that I made
a good point and rubbed Stinker’s chew toy in my
face and left.
SUNDAY 15
Dear Dumb Diary,
Aunt Carol and Uncle Dan came over this
morning and hugged me a little longer than
usual. I guess people hug when they’re sad. But they
also do it when they’re happy.
Hugs are actually a pretty unreliable way to
know how people are feeling, especially Isabella. She
also does it when she’s angry and hungry. (Although
these do tend to be throatish hugs.)
Aunt Carol is married to our assistant
principal (my Uncle Dan), plus she works at my
school, so she knows all the things that are going
on at school that the kids permit her to know.
“Are you going to that dance?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You know who you should go with?” she said.
“Who?”
“Your butt.”
This is the type of thing my Aunt Carol says
when she wants my mom to throw something at her.
“Carol! Don’t say ‘butt’ to her,” my mom said.
“But why?” Aunt Carol said in such a way
that you could actually hear her using italics on the
word “but.”
My mom said she knew exactly what Aunt
Carol wanted that particular “but” to sound like,