Dear Dumb Diary #6: The Problem with Here Is That it's Where I'm From (Dear Dumb Diary Series)
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THE PROBLEM WITH HERE IS
THAT IT’S WHERE I’M FROM
From New York Times bestselling author Jim Benton
DEAR
DUMB
DIARY,
THE PROBLEM WITH
HERE IS THAT IT'S
WHERE I'M FROM
THINK YOU CAN HANDLE
JAMIE KELLY’S FIRST YEAR OF DIARIES?
#1 LET’S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED
#2 MY PANTS ARE HAUNTED!
#3 AM I THE PRINCESS OR THE FROG?
#4 NEVER DO ANYTHING, EVER
#5 CAN ADULTS BECOME HUMAN?
#6 THE PROBLEM WITH HERE IS THAT IT'S WHERE I'M FROM
#7 NEVER UNDERESTIMATE YOUR DUMBNESS
#8 IT’S NOT MY FAULT I KNOW EVERYTHING
#9 THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS AREN'T FOR
#10 THE WORST THINGS IN LIFE ARE ALSO FREE
#11 OKAY, SO MAYBE I DO HAVE SUPERPOWERS
#12 ME! (JUST LIKE YOU, ONLY BETTER)
AND DON’T MISS YEAR TWO!
YEAR TWO #1: SCHOOL. HASN’T THIS GONE ON LONG ENOUGH?
YEAR TWO #2: THE SUPER-NICE ARE SUPER-ANNOYING
YEAR TWO #3: NOBODY'S PERFECT. I'M AS CLOSE AS IT GETS.
YEAR TWO #4: WHAT I DON’T KNOW MIGHT HURT ME
DEAR
DUMB
DIARY,
THE PROBLEM WITH
HERE IS THAT IT'S
WHERE I'M FROM
SCHOLASTIC INC.
Jim Benton’s Tales from Mackerel Middle School
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First printing, July 2004
Dear Whoever Is Reading My Dumb Diary,
Are you sure you’re supposed to be
reading somebody else’s diary? Maybe I
told you that you could, so that’s okay. But if
you are Angeline, or anybody else that gets
everything the easy way, I did NOT give you
permission, SO STOP IT!
If you are my parents, then YES, I know
that I am not allowed to call people blond-
wads or to spread rumors or make crank
calls, but this is a diary, so maybe I didn’t
actually “do” any of these things. I wrote
them. And, if you punish me for it, then I
will know that you read my diary, which I am
not giving you permission to do.
Now, by the power vested in me, I do
promise that everything in this diary is true,
or at least as true as I think it needs to
be —although now that I think about it, I’m
not really wearing a vest. . . .
Signed,
PS: You should know that I heard about this one
girl, from another school or something, who read
somebody’s diary without permission. She felt so
guilty about it that she could never smile again
as long as she lived. Not even at koalas or when
this blond girl she knew got a pimple the size of a
pineapple right in the middle of her forehead.
PPS: Oh! And there was another kid I heard about
who felt so guilty after he read somebody’s diary
that he lost his will to enjoy himself and watched
only golf on TV for the rest of his life.
Sunday 01
Dear Dumb Diary,
I’m trying to grow an accent.
Isabella was over last night and we were
watching this movie and it had this one girl from
England in it and everything she said sounded smart
or dainty.
She could say, “Oh, do pardon me, but my
little pup has just dropped a major steamer on your
priceless antique tablecloth. Frightfully sorry.”
And you probably wouldn’t even be mad.
You’d be all, “Oh, yes, well, my fault for putting a
priceless antique tablecloth in my house where your
dog might leave a dumpereeno.”
1
2
Isabella says that people in other countries
are born with strange mouth deformities that make
them talk that way, and that we should consider
ourselves lucky that we can speak normally.
I think she’s wrong. (It has happened before.)
I’m going to try to grow an accent anyway. Do
you think people who talk with accents write with
accents?
Isabella says she’s heard Angeline speak
Spanish or French or something. I’m sure she
learned it in some sort of unfair easy way, like
being born with the deformity Isabella correctly
identified, and not through the rigorous study
that I am enduring at the University of
Watching TV.
3
Monday 02
Dear Dumb Diary,
Okay, I get it. Everybody always loves
Angeline best. Is it just because she’s tall and slim
and blond? So is a MOP. You don’t see anybody
getting all lovey-dovey with one of those.
Although in elementary school, I once saw
a janitor doing something that still makes me
uncomfortable around mops. To make a long story
short: Janitors are people, too, and Valentine’s Day
can be a very lonely time.
Today they announced that later on this
month, they would be handing out ballots so we
can vote for people in categories like MOST
ARTISTIC, FUNNIEST, and BEST FRIENDS.
Of course one of the categories is
PRETTIEST, and I overheard some people at lunch
going, “Why don’t they just print Angeline’s name on
the ballot for PRETTIEST? Everybody knows she’s
going to win. She always wins.”
This is terribly unrealistic, because if a
train tragically crashed into Angeline’s face, we’d
have a whole bunch of useless ballots on our hands.
And I’m not just thinking of myself here —the train
owner would have a bunch of smushed gorgeousness
to wipe off the front of the train.
Isabella always wins for MOST CLEVER,
but she works really hard for that. And I always
win for MOST ARTISTIC, and I work really hard
for that, too —oft
en exposing myself to sequin
fumes for hours on end. But not Angeline. She wins
PRETTIEST without even trying. It’s just not
fair that everything is so automatically easy for
Angeline.
Seriously, isn’t it time we took a stand
against the Effortlessly Beautiful?
Tuesday 03
Dear Dumb Diary,
Mr. Evans started us on another one of his
famous projects today. He wants us to explore people
and cultures through the different things they write.
Then he asked us to throw ideas out there.
Sally, of course, immediately had ideas.
Sally, you may recall, Dumb Diary, is not homely
enough to be as smart as she is—which I think
is a form of lying. If somebody is really really
intelligent, it would be polite if they would ugly it
up a bit before they left the house.
Because of her smartness, Sally immediately
said she’d like to study song lyrics—which was
pure genius because all she’ll have to do is listen
to music. Mr. Evans asked for somebody to partner
with her, and then chose Anika, which probably
makes sense because she has more songs on her
iPod than anybody else. Her collection is so
impressive that the first time I saw it, iPeed.
Not really. Just a little joke there. I could
have said iPood, but I thought that would be too
disgusting.
7
Margaret said she wanted to study poems,
and Mr. Evans asked if anybody wanted to partner
with her on that. Only T.U.K.W.N.I.F. (That Ugly
Kid Whose Name I Forget) raised his hand, which
would have horrifi ed most girls, but Margaret
totally smiled. Kind of romantic, right? Love
is weird, because even though Margaret is sort
of gross (chews pencils, burps super loud) and
T.U.K.W.N.I.F. is sort of gross (dirty nails, lunch
always smells like wet baloney), the fact that the
two of them really have feelings for each other
makes them somehow seem eleven times grosser.
(I have to give Margaret a little credit here: Her
beaverlike behavior has resulted in an ability to
gnaw crude shapes out of pencils, which I guess
makes her a sculptor, if anybody is looking for
teensy, spitty totem poles.)
8
Of course, Angeline also thinks pretty fast on
her feet because they are tiny and dainty and more
like what podiatrists call hooves anyway. She said
she’d like to study graffiti. (In case you don’t know,
Dumb Diary, graffiti is all the stuff people write on
walls.) Dumb idea, huh? But here’s the thing, I knew
in ONE SECOND Mr. Evans was going to ask for a
partner to volunteer, and in TWO SECONDS every
hand in the room would go up. And Angeline—who
has nothing but very easy triumphs—would triumph
again, triumphantly. So, I dumbly did the only dumb
thing I could dumbly do. I took a stand.
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I blurted out, “Aww. I was going to say that!”
And Evans did exactly what I knew he would do. He
paired us up.
It all happened before I knew it. The next
time I think about taking a stand I’m going to take
a nap instead.
10
Aunt Carol drove me home from school today.
You remember, Dumb Diary, that my aunt is an
office lady at our school now. She is engaged to
Assistant Principal Devon, who is Angeline’s uncle,
which has forced me to be related to Angeline
somehow.
I have not lost hope, yet; being engaged to
somebody is the first step toward divorcing them,
so this whole situation could change for me. (I
guess I just like to look on the bright side.)
11
Anyway, since Aunt Carol is getting married
soon, everything in her life revolves around the
wedding. Here’s an example of a conversation a
person might have with a person who has become
a fiancé:
ME: Did you see on the news that there was a
big flood in Wheretheheckistan?
AUNT CAROL: No, but if there’s a flood
here, I’ll be in trouble because my dress has a five-
foot-long train.
ME: Train, huh? Did I tell you my idea about
Angeline’s face and a train?
AUNT CAROL: No, but speaking of
Angeline’s face, my bouquet is going to have some
flowers in it the exact color of her eyes.
In between her description of the awful
old-people music they’ll be playing, and the
awful old-people food they’ll be serving,
Aunt Carol complained that she also has the job
of making, distributing, and counting all those
votes I was telling you about, so Isabella and I will
probably be the first humans on Earth to know who
won what.
I called Isabella and told her, and she was so
excited to know we’d be first that she made a noise
like Mom makes when Dad forgets to put the toilet
seat down, but without all the swearing that comes
afterward.
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Wednesday 04
Dear Dumb Diary,
Can you imagine how great school would be
if you didn’t have to get an education in it? Like, if
all you did was just go in every day and hang around
and not do anything important? It would be like
being a teacher.
13
I looked around for some accent stuff on
TV tonight and I found one show where the people
had French accents. The French accents made
everything sound like you might like to eat it.
Like if you see the words, “pie à la
mode,” in a restaurant that means “pie with
ice cream.” Doesn’t that sound good? Here’s
another: “head lice à la mode.” That means
you have head lice but at least you still get to have
ice cream. Doesn’t that sound better than just
having head lice?
14
Also, it’s amazing that the dogs in Paris
ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND FRENCH. It took
us three years to teach Stinker not to go wee wee on
the rug. I can’t imagine how hard it is to teach dogs
a foreign language. Maybe I’ll try to teach Stinker a
couple of French words, although I probably won’t
start with “oui oui.” (That’s pronounced “wee
wee,” Dumb Diary, and that’s how French people
say “yes”—which just has to make them laugh all
the time.)
Like, you could be all, “Oh, officer, was my
whole family in the house when the meteor hit it?”
And he’d be all, “Wee wee.”
And then the two of you would just laugh and
laugh.
Oh, French people, I just love how foreign
you are!
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Thursday 05
Dear Dumb Diary,
Meat Loaf Day, of course. Thursday
is always Meat Loaf Day. If you buy your lunch at
school, lunchroom monitor Bruntford is there to
&
nbsp; make you eat the meat loaf, in spite of the fact
that it smells like baked armpit.
Our opinion of Miss Bruntford has changed,
I guess. She is still as mean and nasty as, let’s say,
a cow with thingies that could shoot flames at you.
But when Miss Anderson* was in love with Aunt
Carol’s fiancé, Miss Bruntford did go out of her way
to destroy Miss Anderson’s hopes and dreams, so in
some ways she’s really, really nice.
Still, it’s easier to eat the meat loaf than
to get into an argument with Miss Bruntford about
it, so today I tried to make it more appetizing by
saying “meat loaf” with a French accent. But
contorting my mouth in French ways just made me
gag more.
*Miss Anderson is my art teacher and is pretty enough to be a waitress or even sell
real estate. She used to be my B.T.F.—that’s like a B.F.F., but with a teacher. Like so
many of the Best Forever Relationships, it wasn’t good and it didn’t last.
Isabella was doing her best to try to make me
laugh while I was eating. I told her never to do that
because I once heard about this girl at another
school who laughed while she was eating lunch and
shot spaghetti out of her nose. The teachers were
afraid it was an intestine or a vein or something, so
the school nurse had to come down to the
lunchroom and remove it while the entire world
of her school watched. Of course, the
combination of nasal-noodle-poisoning
and high-intensity embarrassment nearly
killed her.
17
While Isabella worked even harder to make
me laugh, Angeline walked by on her way to the
super-popular table. I could have sworn that I
noticed Angeline stop for a split second next to our
table, as if she was thinking about sitting down.
Angeline can sit wherever she wants, of
course. Everybody knows that. When you are as