by Jim Benton
and Aunt Carol said that was because my mom is an
expert on how butts sound.
As the two of them laughed, I thought about
Grandma for a second, and I wasn’t sure if it was
right for them to have this dumb conversation,
considering that their mom was . . . you know.
And I think that must have occurred to them,
too, because they stopped laughing before they
got to the honking-cackling-snorting phase.
I’ll know that Mom is officially herself again
when her laugh starts sounding like something
going very wrong in a petting zoo.
MONDAY 16
Dear Dumb Diary,
Today Mr. Smith probably taught us some
things about stuff. I don’t really know. Maybe it was
one of those lessons I’ll need later in life. They’ve
been telling me I’d need these school things later in
life since kindergarten. I’m really looking forward
to seeing how the macaroni art comes in handy.
I was trying to concentrate on what Mr.
Smith was saying, but he was doing that thing that
teachers do sometimes when it’s obvious that they
don’t want you to learn what they’re teaching.
They pick something that doesn’t matter to
anybody and talk about it in this way that makes
you think about anything else in the world.
You know why they do this? Think about it: It’s
because if you managed to learn everything they had
to teach, you could just steal their job the following
year. They really NEED you to miss some things.
And so I thought about other things.
I kept thinking about how things were so
different in the olden times when my grandma
went to school. The Internet hadn’t been invented
yet, and there were maybe three television channels,
and I seriously doubt that there were any of the
high-quality chewing gums that modern humans
require.
The only thing you had to distract you from
reading your schoolbooks was reading your not-
schoolbooks.
Try to imagine this.
You know how you get impatient waiting ten
seconds for your computer to start? My grandma
had to wait fifty years for hers to start.
Maybe that’s why she seemed a little
dumb to me.
Angeline stopped me in the hall today and
asked how I was doing. I appreciated her concern,
but I also resented it. It made me feel like she
thought I was weak, and in the wild, that would
mean that she was planning to take over my banana
tree or something.
“You can’t have my bananas,” I
said, immediately realizing that she might not be
bright enough to understand what I meant by that.
It must be hard being so dim-witted.
“There’s another dance coming up,” she went
on, seemingly deaf to my banana warning.
I wondered just how much dancing the school
thought we needed to do. Honestly, you probably
only medically need to dance for a few minutes a
day, so they don’t really need to organize a special
event for it. I mean, you’re supposed to get a lot of
vitamin C, too, but we don’t have a big orange-
juice-drinking party every week.
This was the point when I realized that I wasn’t
just wondering this stuff. I was saying it. Out loud.
Maybe even shouting it. Perhaps damply.
I shouldn’t get mad at Angeline. I know she
means well, but for some reason, I always get mad at
well-meaners. Plus, I know that she is attractive
on purpose, and I feel that this is a hurtful action on
her part, maybe even a form of nonaggressive and
deeply pleasant bullying.
“Don’t go to the dance if you don’t want to,”
Angeline said, “but we need posters. And you’re the
best postermaker in school.”
She was right. School posters can be
disastrously amateurish.
TUESDAY 17
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella was in the library on a computer
every free minute she had today. I figured she was
doing homework, or trying to crash the Internet, or
bidding on a boa constrictor.
“They’re just like kittens,” she
always says. “Legless kittens that choke people
sometimes. You wouldn’t hold it against a kitten,
would you, if it had to choke somebody?”
I kept trying to sneak a look at what she was
doing on the computer, but the librarians always
crowd around her when she’s online to make sure
laws aren’t being broken, so I couldn’t see
anything.
I asked her about it later and she just
scowled and said, “Mind your own fat hairy
business, nosy,” which is Isabella’s way of
smiling and winking and saying, “It’s a secret.”
When I got home this afternoon, I read
another entry from Grandma’s diary:
My best friend, R., says that even though M.B.
seems to be attracted to A.S., I shouldn’t give up —
even if that means giving A.S. a punch in the nose right
in front of the entire school. R. says the worst that
could happen is that my parents will double my chores
and maybe the principal will give me a paddling.
A PADDLING? They paddled kids at school?
Isabella is probably pretty glad they don’t do that
at our school.
I wish there was some way I could send a
note back in time and tell my grandma not to be so
dumb. Don’t you know that you’re going to grow up
and be a grandma? Stop acting like a dumb kid.
Stop acting like me.
WEDNESDAY 18
Dear Dumb Diary,
Angeline used her face to bother me today by
making sounds come out of it prettily.
“We need those posters for the dance, Jamie.
You said that you’d take care of it. If you won’t do it,
then I’m going to have to find somebody else.”
She shook Dicky Flartsnutt at me to make
her point.
“Point taken,” I said, wondering how
Dicky felt about being used as a point.
He just grinned. Nobody wants to be a point,
but Dicky seems to enjoy any form of human contact.
And not many of the boys would object to
Angeline using them as a visual aid.
I don’t think shaking Dicky Flartsnutt is a
good idea. I often get the impression he’s already
a little shaken.
One time he asked me, “Jamie, when I lick my
own palm, it doesn’t make me scream. But when I
do it to a stranger’s palm, they always scream. Do
you think there’s something wrong with those
people?”
When I got home, I started working on the
posters. I’ve learned that my grandma spent too
much time on dumbness like this dance, and I don’t
think we should dumbly encourage kids to be dumb.
I think MY future granddaughter would
approve of my reasonable and intelligent posters.
Thursd
ay 19
Dear Dumb Diary,
Angeline used a bad word. About my posters.
Okay, so she didn’t think my posters were
right for the dance and said that she had imagined
that they would be — in her words — “good.”
She also said that the idea was for people to
want to come to the dance, and that my posters
looked more like something advertising a funeral.
That’s right. She said FUNERAL. And then
she clamped her hand over her mouth.
I don’t know how long after somebody has
to go to a real funeral that it becomes okay for you
to use the word “funeral” around them, but I’m
pretty sure it’s never ever ever ever again.
Of course, Isabella was right there to
support me and my posters, which she did by
shrugging and wandering away. She probably meant
to say, “Angeline, you horrible smear of insensitivity,
stop being cruel and blond.”
I told Angeline that she gave me the
responsibility for the posters, and I’m not going to
change them.
She nodded and backed down, although I
know it’s only because my grandma died and she felt
awful for accidentally using a bad word on me.
Maybe we need better words for funerals.
Friday 20
Dear Dumb Diary,
Another entry in Grandma’s diary:
Only one week to the dance. I can hardly wait.
I wish I had something better to wear, but money is
pretty tight around here. I asked Mom to give me some
dancing lessons. I don’t want to look like an oaf at
the dance. Can A.S. dance? I’m not sure. I don’t
want M.B. dancing with that imbecile all evening.
Can you believe it, Dumb Diary? Entry after
entry about the most ridiculous things you can
imagine. All the important things she should be
thinking about, all the meaningful things she could
be saying, and she’s all twisted up over some boy
and some pretty girl that’s making her jealous.
I should ask Hudson what he thinks about this
sometime when Angeline isn’t gorgeously leading
him around by his eighth (possibly seventh)
cutest nose.
Saturday 21
Dear Dumb Diary,
Hudson called here this morning before I was
even awake. Back when I was dumber, I probably
would have dumbly called him back right away to say
something dumb, but those days are behind me now.
Or maybe — back in those dumb old days of
mine— I would have called Isabella to see if she
wanted to hang around and do something dumb
like have a dance -off with my beagles, who can
practically never beat us, except for that one time.
It may have been a little mean of me, but I
have to say, nobody can out- twerk a beagle with
a balloon tied to his tail. Scientists are certain that
this is how twerking was invented in the first place.
Mom asked me if I wanted to go with her to
drop off a picture of Grandma for framing. I wanted
to, but I actually have a lot of homework this
weekend and I needed to get started pretending
that I was doing it.
Sunday 22
Dear Dumb Diary,
What the heck.
I hopped out of bed early this morning and
DID my homework. Not pretended to do it. I
did it. Like with actual pencils and words and
numbers.
I know what you’re thinking, Dumb Diary, but
no, the TV was working fine.
And the Internet was functioning normally.
And the dogs didn’t have Diarrhoyal on my
bed again. (That’s my medical term for a royal case
of diarrhea.)
I just felt like maybe I need to be smarter,
you know, for the sake of my granddaughter, who is
surely reading my diary right now.
(You hear that, Elialexithity? Grandma
here, not being dumb. And by the way, your name:
Elialexithity is one I created by combining the three
most beautiful names I know - Elizabeth, Felicity,
and Alexandra.
So you’re welcome.)
I also cleaned my room, and I didn’t even use
the method where you put everything in a drawer.
It took me hours to do, and I found a sock that I
remember losing in the third grade that has evidently
been sitting here, on the floor, in plain sight for the
entire time. I wonder why I didn’t think of looking
for it on the floor.
I brushed Stinker, too, and it may be the first
time I ever did because I had enough hair to make a
new Stinker. This interested him so much that while I
was downstairs getting a broom, I believe he may
have eaten his hair twin. I can’t blame him. It
was a magnificent thing to behold. I probably
would have eaten mine.
I even helped Mom with her special project
today. Sometimes Mom likes to wreck a few dinners
in advance on Sunday, and then freeze them for
us to microwave during the week when there isn’t
enough time to wreck them from scratch.
It was the kind of productive,
meaningful Sunday that you kind of wish your
grandmother would have written about instead
of this:
If I live to be a hundred years old, nothing will
ever matter to me as much as this dance and making
the right impression on M.B. I’m telling you, Diary,
NOTHING.
Snap out of it, Granny!
C’mon! Care about something
smarter than this! Don’t you
know that you’re not going to
live forever.
Monday 23
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella was up in the library at lunch today,
doing whatever it is she’s doing on the computer
these days. She still won’t talk about it.
Dicky got caught sneaking out of the lunchroom,
trying to smuggle a lunch for her in his hat.
Bruntford got a confession out of him pretty
easily — she was using that teacher grip where
they’re not really hurting you but you know they
could if they wanted to. It’s a grip they develop
through years of opening countless aspirin
bottles. Teachers eat those like salted peanuts.
Not much of a loss for Isabella anyway. I
can’t imagine what school macaroni marinated in
Dicky’s dirty little hat would taste like. Oh wait,
yes I can:
NO DIFFERENT.
Angeline sat down next to me while I was
smartly eating kale. It’s pretty much the only way
you can eat it. Not happily, not enthusiastically,
not attractively. Just smartly.
“You going to the dance?” she asked me.
“Not the best use of my time,” I said
gagfully, as the taste of the kale snuck up on
me a little as I was talking.
I saw Angeline consider, just for a moment,
putting her hand on mine. And then she changed
her mind.
Her eyes were even bigger and more watery
than ever. They were
so watery that it actually
started to feel a little humid around her face. I
knew she wanted to say something kind and
sensitive. She’s like that.
I smiled at her.
“Hey, why don’t you fart off?” I said sweetly.
Is that a thing? Telling somebody to “fart
off” ? I think it must be, because it seemed to
have the desired effect on Angeline. She inhaled
sharply, stood, and turned quickly, making her hair
crack like a little whip.
Though, okay, there are probably smarter
ways to say the same thing.
Because, you know, I’m all about the
smart now.
Tuesday 24
Dear Dumb Diary,
I read another entry from Grandma today.
My best friend, R., pointed out that I’m
developing a blemish right in the middle of my forehead.
I suppose I should be grateful to have it brought
to my attention, but I could have done without the
laughter. I’ll have to see if the pharmacist can
recommend something. I don’t want to look like a
Cyclops at the dance.
A.S., as you can imagine, has never been afflicted
with a pimple or blemish or wart, and struts around with
a complexion that looks like the finest satin cloth.
And like cloth, I might enjoy putting a few
stitches in it.
Hudson Rivers stopped in front of my locker
today. He didn’t say anything at first, which made
me think that something was bothering him.
I really wanted to know how to help. I wanted
to find out what was wrong.
So I asked.
“What’s your problem?” I said.
I immediately realized that I hadn’t sounded
as caring as I meant to, and I made a note to myself
to sound more caring when I actually do care.
Then Hudson stood there, saying things