Dear Dumb Diary #11: Okay, So Maybe I Do Have Superpowers

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by Jim Benton


  She looked at me and asked, “Why? Do you

  want to go and tell them it isn’t?”

  And she was right, which is always a

  surprising thing to discover about an adult. You

  know, because of how they are.

  FRIDAY 13

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  I asked Isabella why she had even wanted to

  have an arm-wrestling competition in the first

  place. She said she did the whole thing so that Jake

  and Emmily could meet and see how much they had

  in common, like a love for arm wrestling, and

  thinking that puppets are alive.

  It might be hard for other people to believe

  that Isabella would go to all this trouble for another

  person (or any trouble, for that matter), but I

  happen to know that Isabella has a soft spot for

  Emmily. This is evidenced by the several times she

  has elected not to put the KICK ME sign on

  Emmily’s back again after numerous impacts

  knocked it off.

  Saturday 14

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Aunt Carol came over today. She was going

  shopping and asked Angeline to join her and they

  decided to stop by and see if I felt like going along.

  Remember, Dumb Diary, that Aunt Carol is

  also Angeline’s aunt now because she married

  Angeline’s uncle. I know I have explained this to you

  before, but I want this to serve as a warning to

  future Jamie to be very careful who she marries,

  and to consider the impact your marriages will have

  on the environment. Especially the environment

  of your various relatives, who will have to deal with

  your husbandand his relatives, even though they

  did not share in the joy of picking out a wedding

  dress and bossing around your bridesmaids.

  When Aunt Carol and Angeline invited me

  to go shopping, I suggested we pick up Isabella.

  They reminded me that Isabella was currently not

  welcome at the mall due to a misunderstanding

  about a bottle of bubble bath liquid and their

  fountain and somebody who looked like Isabella

  being videotaped pouring one into the other.

  Long story short: That could have been

  anybody that looked like Isabella, and the fountain

  needed to be cleaned anyway. And probably the

  floor. And possibly the pants of the forty people

  that slipped in it.

  So we went without Isabella, because the

  mall is a mystical, magical, majestic place

  where you may find all of the world’s trea sures (but

  make sure you get a receipt, because when you get

  home you may find that some of the world’s treasures

  make some of your other trea sures look fat). And I

  couldn’t pass that up.

  We went to a bunch of stores and watched

  Aunt Carol almost buy a tremendously ugly purse,

  but we sneered at it so hard she dropped it like it

  was full of scorpions. (Oldsters, we will always be

  there for you, telling you when things are gross, if

  you just call out to us.)

  We had lunch at the mall, too. For some

  reason, food always tastes better when it’s

  surrounded by stuff you can’t afford.

  And then two amazing things happened at

  the same time: First, I saw Hudson Rivers with

  his dad across the mall and he guy-waved at us.

  The second thing was that Chip, who is the

  number one cutest guy in our school, walked

  over and asked Angeline if she would meet him at

  the Fun Fair.

  Chip is cute enough to be in a commercial for

  men’s cologne, but he is not that kind of weird cute

  where you can tell he would be just as cute if he had

  been born a girl. Chip also has a supercoolness

  that never quits.

  Angeline did not choke on the lemonade

  she was drinking and then start laughing out of

  some kind of weird embarrassment —which I may

  have done, but that is a perfectly normal reaction

  when you are unexpectedly avalanched by that

  much coolness.

  Instead, Angeline barely smiled and quietly

  said, “I guess.”

  And that’s when my superpowers

  kicked in. Hudson was watching us from across the

  food court, and his face just fell. And then a split

  second of anger flashed across it, and then a

  microsecond of sadness. And then he turned,

  and was gone.

  Don’t think I’m nuts here, Dumb Diary, but I

  believe it’s possible that boys, like ants, may

  actually, really, and truly feel things.

  Sunday 15

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Once, there was a huge wart. Either it ate

  something terrible, or it contracted some kind of

  horrible illness, and a beagle broke out on its skin

  and began to grow.

  When it achieved maximum grossness, the

  beagle ate the wart and lived on by itself.

  Eventually, this wartdog came to be known as

  Stinker, my beagle.

  Stinker grew in size and odor, living mostly on

  dog food, morsels dropped on the floor, an

  occasional sock or underpant, and for dessert, his

  own foul moods.

  In order to anger me as deeply as possible,

  Stinker married Angeline’s dog, Stickybuns, and

  they had puppies together. One of those, Stinkette,

  is also my dog.

  Stinkette inherited many qualities from her

  dogdaddy. She looks like him, smells putrid like him,

  and has similar tastes in food, which is why I’m even

  mentioning this.

  This morning I was talking to my ant jar,

  encouraging the ants to live at least until our

  report was due, and I noticed Stinkette snurfling

  under my bed.

  When I dragged her out, she had dust bunnies

  on her nose, and had evidently eaten quite a few

  because she started making the loud KACK noise

  beagles make to indicate that they have eaten

  something they didn’t care for, and are about to

  kack it out on the floor.

  The sound of the kacking, and the

  appearance of the partially swallowed dust

  bunnies, suddenly reminded me that I might

  have to kiss Mike Pinsetti.

  In a panic, I ran downstairs and gathered a

  bunch of things so I could set up a practice bottle-

  toss game in my backyard and try to improve.

  I set up bottles to tip over with a tennis ball,

  and a drawing of a clown to avoid hitting with the

  ball, just to be safe. (I don’t think I could

  hospitalize a clown with a tennis ball, but I don’t

  want to take that chance.)

  When the dogs saw me go outside with a ball,

  they assumed that it was for them, because chasing

  after balls is one of the most important things in the

  world to dogs, right after scratching, slobbering,

  and things I’d rather not talk about.

  Stinker is a huge ball hog, so if Stinkette

  was going to get any chance at all to play, I had to

  throw it directly to her. This is harder than you might

  think, because Stinker likes to
use his gargantuan

  fatness to get between me and Stinkette. If Stinker

  was just four pounds heavier, the city would make

  us get a permit to operate a dairy.

  Still, I managed to get the ball past the

  cow-beagle thing, so Stinkette got a chance to play.

  After a while, Isabella and Emmily came over

  for more ant study, and Angeline tagged along

  because she said she finished her report already

  and would help with ours if we wanted.

  They watched me play with the dogs before I

  put them inside so that I could demonstrate the

  fake Fun Fair game I was going to use to practice.

  Isabella objected, saying that she made the

  bet with an unpracticed Jamie, and that practicing

  this way was cheating.

  But both Angeline and Emmily stood up for

  me, saying practicing was perfectly fair — Angeline

  pointed out that it was how she learned the guitar,

  and Emmily pointed out that it was how she learned

  pointing.

  And then, just to show Isabella how things

  worked, I set up the bottles and threw a high-speed,

  perfectly aimed tennis ball onto the roof.

  The next ball was much closer, bouncing off

  a window behind which Stinkette was frantically

  trying to catch it.

  The following ten throws went a variety of

  places. I never hit the target, but I was getting

  closer. Isabella was laughing so hard she wrote,

  “Please stop can’t breathe” in the dirt

  with her finger.

  I finally had to stop when my arm started to

  hurt and my mom came out and said that Stinkette

  was slobbering all over the glass and I should quit

  before she peed.

  Isabella didn’t change her mind about me

  practicing, but she did ask me to record it next time

  so she could watch it anytime she was depressed.

  We went inside and got to work writing down

  all sorts of ant junk, like that they only live for

  six to nine weeks, except the queen, who can live for

  years and have millions of babies. Also that a

  colony is almost all females, who do all of the hard

  work, with only a few tiny flying males winging

  around the queen.

  I included in our report that I think it’s pretty

  unfair that girl ants don’t have a choice in the

  things they do. Maybe some of them want to fly,

  maybe some of them want to strike out on their

  own and be queens of their own colonies. Maybe

  there’s an ant that just wants to do things her

  own way.

  When I said that, I noticed that Angeline

  wrote it down. She wrote only three words on her

  paper: Her Own Way. She had a faraway look

  in her eyes, like she was thinking hard about

  something, or had been very recently kicked in

  the face.

  Monday 16

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  In the cafeteria today, Emmily said that Jake

  asked her to meet him at the fair and she told him

  she couldn’t.

  This really surprised all of us, because Emmily

  will accept an invitation to watch you do laundry.

  When we asked her why, she said it was

  mostly because she had already met him. Then

  she called us stupid for not remembering that she’d

  met him at the arm-wrestling competition.

  After a few minutes of explaining her little

  mistake to her, and how “meet” can mean a couple

  different things, Angeline told Emmily to just go

  explain to Jake and tell him that she wanted to

  meet up with him at the fair.

  Isabella chimed in that girls can’t ask boys to

  things because asking is the boy’s job.

  Angeline was a little angry at this and asked

  Isabella if she thought we should behave like a

  bunch of ants, and follow some set of bug rules

  about what the females could and could not do.

  It turns out that Isabella may have been

  listening in class after all, because she pointed out

  that there are a heck of a lot more ants in the world

  than there are people, so maybe we SHOULD take

  a little advice from the ants, who were at least

  smart enough to get rid of all the blond-haired

  ants long ago.

  I’m almost friends with Angeline now, but

  that doesn’t mean I’m friends with her hair, and I

  had to laugh at Isabella’s scientific observation.

  (I’m afraid our arguing may have confused

  Emmily, whose eyes cross when this happens. It was

  probably the comment about blond ants.)

  Angeline stood up with a look on her face like

  my mom after Dad makes a dadmistake

  (examples include: “Yes, it makes you look fat” or

  “Don’t worry, we can still eat this”). Maintaining eye

  contact with Isabella the whole time, she walked

  over to a table where Pinsetti was sitting and asked

  him, loud enough for me and Emmily and Isabella

  and Hudson (who was sitting just a couple tables

  away) to hear, if he would like to meet up

  with her at the Fun Fair.

  Time seemed to stop for a minute, especially

  for Pinsetti, whose breathing also did. After a little

  shake, he snapped out of it and said yes.

  Angeline walked back, sat down, and said

  to Emmily: “You see? You can ask Jake if you want to.

  Anybody can ask anybody.”

  Emmily nodded, smiled, and said, “Yeah, I

  know. I just don’t want to.”

  While Isabella laughed, I watched Angeline

  swallow hard, realizing that she had just asked

  Pinsetti to the fair after she had already told Chip

  she’d meet him there, and all because she was

  trying to prove a point to somebody who already

  understood it.

  And I felt sorry for her.

  I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for Angeline’s

  eyelashes. Not one bit. I’m not friends with those,

  either.

  But I did feel sorry for the girl they were

  dragging around.

  Tuesday 17

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Today I looked at my jar of ants, which I now

  realize are all girl ants, and explained to them it

  wouldn’t be much longer before they could go free.

  I just wanted to turn them in with the report, and

  then that would be that. I tried to cheer them up

  with some candy, which I gave to them in very small

  pieces gently lowered into the jar.

  Then I put them on the highest shelf in my

  room, because I could feel Stinkette’s beady little

  beagle eyes glaring at the candy in the jar.

  Because I’m a little bit psychic (it comes with

  the superpowers), I detected some tension between

  Isabella and Angeline in science class. I think that

  Angeline may blame Isabella a little for putting her

  in that position with Pinsetti. Also, the big heart

  with “Angeline Loves Pinsetti” written on it

  that Isabella made and held up for Angeline to see

  in class could have contributed to the hard feelings.

  Isabella very nearly got caugh
t by Mrs. Maple,

  who I suspect may use those long, waggling toes to

  detect things the ways ants use their antennae.

  Angeline didn’t really react at all, which is

  the number one way to infuriate Isabella. I’m

  not sure if I told that to Angeline, or if she figured it

  out by watching TV shows about handling the

  criminally insane or babies.

  The Toe reminded us that our ant reports are

  due in ten days, and Emmily raised her hand to ask

  a question.

  When Emmily raises her hand, teachers always

  grit their teeth, take a huge inhale, and then let it

  out in one big burst through their nostrils. They’ve

  learned from experience that there are generally

  four categories of questions Emmily asks:

  But Mrs. Maple called on her anyway.

  1. “Can I please go to the bathroom?”

  2. “Where is the bathroom?”

  3. “Is it okay if I raise my hand and ask a

  question?”

  4. “I don’t understand anything you’ve said

  in the last thirty minutes. Could you explain

  it again, please? Also the last six weeks.”

  And Emmily asked, “Why are ants so strong?

  You don’t see other little things, like hamsters,

  lifting couches over their heads. And if the females

  are that strong, wouldn’t the boy ants be even

  better at doing the work, since boys are stronger

  than girls?”

  Mrs. Maple’s mean face was replaced by one

  of astonishment that Emmily had asked a real

  question. The rest of us were astonished, too, and

  we probably would have listened to the answer

  except for the fact that it was astonishingly

  boring.

  Except Isabella listened. And she listened

  very carefully.

  Angeline noticed and made a “What’s up

  with Isabella” face at me, and I made a

  “Yeah, I know” face back at her.

  Wednesday 18

  Dear Dumb Diary,

 

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