down SeaWorld. Though he is probably handsome
enough to, let’s say, step right on a fish.
Assistant Principal Devon slid his old glasses
across the desk to me and asked if I wanted to try
them on, which I did, but at that exact moment, one
of the mean office ladies walked into his office and
when I turned around and saw Pure Ugliness
magnified a million jillion times, I screamed a little.
Pure Ugly was just never meant to be magnified
that much.
I guess my scream startled the office lady
enough to send her stumbling backward into a
counter and knock over the big bowl of butterscotch
candies. Now, I know this sounds pretty good, but
it gets better because when she stepped on one of
those little candies with her clunky ugly old shoes,
her leg went right out from underneath her and her
hip made a popping sound loud enough to be heard
over my laughter.
Somebody called 911, and Assistant Principal
Devon sent me back to class. As I went I could
hardly believe that there was a time when I thought
those butterscotch candies weren’t good for
anything.
Friday 06
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella apologized for telling on me. And
I apologized for gluing a picture to her head.
Isabella’s apology went something like this: “It’s
your own fault, Jamie. You know how I roll, when it
comes to getting even.”
Not exactly the kind of thing you read inside
a greeting card, I guess. But that’s Isabella and
that’s how she rolls. One of these days I’m going to
get a way to roll.
Also, her mom just started another diet,
which means Isabella’s whole house has to go on
a diet, because that’s how her mom’s stomach
rolls . . . when it comes to her mom’s stomach rolls.
And when Isabella has a sudden reduction in sugar
intake, she is not her normal pleasant self.
I got high fives for attacking the mean office
lady. Of course, I didn’t really attack anybody. I
would never attack anybody. Who wasn’t blond. And
Angeline.
But when a story travels through a middle
school, it gets built up every time somebody tells
somebody else. Like this one time when there was a
rumor going around that Angeline was the prettiest
girl in the state, which was totally wrong because
somebody prettier could have been flying over the
state in an airplane, and when you fly over a state
technically you are in the state, so Angeline was
not necessarily the prettiest. For a couple of hours.
I felt kind of bad about the Injured Mean
Office Lady so I stopped by the office and asked
Mr. Devon how she was. He said she broke her hip
and will be retiring. I guess the office ladies place
a lot of importance on hips since they seem to be
having some sort of contest to grow the biggest pair.
The butterscotch candies were gone, and Mr.
Devon didn’t punish me for gluing Isabella’s hair
so I guess that means I’m pretty enough to break
a Mean Office Lady’s hip if a handsomish assistant
principal and the second prettiest girl in the
state help me do it. (Let’s face it: Angeline’s
collage thing was the reason I was in the office in
the first place. . . .)
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And Angeline, whose entire life is One
Continuous Walk Down the Runway,
managed to find time to say, “Good job on the
office lady, Jamie. Couldn’t have come at a better
time. Let’s hope her replacement is pretty.”
Which, now that I think about it, is sort of
weird, because why would Angeline care ??
Unless she is planning — as I have always
suspected — to do away with us all, one at a time,
and replace us with more attractive versions of
ourselves. And now she has made me an accomplice
in her sinister plan.
Here’s the thing about Angeline. I know that
she shouldn’t really bother me that much. I mean,
Angeline has even done nice things for me in the
past, although I have come to believe that these
were probably accidental.
There’s just something so infuriating about
perfect people. When’s she’s nice it makes me
mad. When she’s pretty, it makes me mad. It never
changes. I guess the only good thing about Angeline
is that she can never bother me more than she does
right now. Perfect people make me perfectly ill.
Hey, maybe that’s how I roll.
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Aunt Carol called while we were eating
tonight, which ticked Mom off a little, since she
had spent all afternoon ruining dinner. But then she
started talking to her and got all excited because
Aunt Carol is going to be staying with us for a while.
Mom hardly even noticed when Dad and I
carefully concealed the uneaten portion of the
meal with cleverly draped napkins and snuck them
right past her and into the garbage. (Mom’s cooking
makes Crafty Napkin Draping an essential
survival skill around here.)
Aunt Carol is my mom’s younger sister, so
when I look at her, I think I can imagine my mom
before she became afflicted with Momness. (Or
would that be called Momism? Momitis? Anyway,
there’s no cure.)
Aunt Carol is single, so her wardrobe is similar
to the clothes my old Barbies used to have except
that Aunt Carol doesn’t spend as much time up on
her tiptoes.
I love my mom, of course, and if she was
anything like Aunt Carol, I probably would have
liked her before she became an adult, but as you
know, Dumb Diary, adults are very hard to like
except for people in the entertainment business —
with the exception of clowns, who may be the
hardest of all.
Saturday 07
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella came over today. We had a little
mini-project to do for social studies. Our teacher,
Mr. VanDoy (who never smiles) told us to try to
find social behavior in people that was similar
to the social behavior in animals.
Isabella does not usually volunteer to kill a
Saturday by coming over to do homework, but there
still are no sweets in her house, and we’re always
pretty well stocked with junk.
Mr. VanDoy showed us a video last week
with chimpanzees and he told us about all the
complicated ways they communicate, but after
seeing a bunch of monkeys on the educational
channels, I really think that most communication
between monkeys is just them saying: “Dude.
What’s wrong with your butt? Did you back into a
fan or something? Did you sit down on the stove? Do
you need to go to the hospital? There’s something
wrong with your butt.”
Once we sta
rted talking about it, I started
seeing lots of ways that adults are like animals.
My dad goes to an office every day, and the
building is like a beehive where the little adults
scurry around and make honey and have to do what
the queen bee says, although in my dad’s case the
queen is a man bee — and they don’t make honey,
they make accounting.
My mom is sort of like a lioness that
prowls the grasslands, instinctively hunting a
microwavable zebra for her family because it takes
too long to prepare a real zebra.
And Isabella . . .
27
And this is where it broke down for us.
We could see how adults were like animals, but we
really couldn’t find any examples of how we were
like animals.
Isabella says that science believes that
adults might not even actually be human beings.
And the more we talked about it, the righter she
seemed.
Sunday 08
Dear Dumb Diary,
hooray! Aunt Carol came today. This
really threw Dad’s Sunday off because he has a lot
of important things to do on Sunday, like dress like
a slob and halfway complete a project around the
house.
But he always manages to look presentable
when Mom’s relatives come over . . . although he
often looks like something itches.
Technically, Aunt Carol is an adult relative,
and normally, this would be a big problem, since most
conversations with adult relatives sound like this:
OLD RELATIVE: So, how’s school?
ME: Fine.
OLD RELATIVE: And how’s soccer going?
ME: Fine. (If I explain that I’ve never played
soccer, it will just lead to extra questions.)
OLD RELATIVE:So how do you like all this
rain we’re having?
ME: I don’t know.
But Aunt Carol is a bit more fun:
Aunt Carol: So, how’s school going?
ME: Fine.
Aunt Carol: Are any of the kids really
gross?
mom: Stop it, Carol.
ME: Angeline is gross.
mom: Jamie!
Aunt Carol: Did you know your mom wet
her pants once at school?
mom: Don’t listen to her, Jamie. She’s taken
her allergy medicine, and she doesn’t know
what she’s saying (whispers something really
angry at Aunt Carol).
31
AUNT CAROL: Jeez! Okay, okay. I’ll drop
it. Uh, Jamie, uh . . . How do you like all this
rain we’re having?
ME: I don’t know.
AUNT CAROL: I’ll bet your mom hates it. It
could get her pants wet.
This is the point at which Mom throws
something at Aunt Carol and the conversation
is pretty much over. It’s really hard not to like
somebody that can make your mom throw a pillow.
It’s because they’re sisters. Mom says that
nobody, anywhere, can ever make you crazy like a
relative. Not a friend, not an enemy, NOBODY.
It’s like my one dirty small cousin with the
strawberry allergy, who is a big wad of filth and a
dope. He drives me nuts, but at least he’s useful
at family gatherings because when I stand next
to him, I appear clean and lovely and bright in
comparison — not that I’m not clean and lovely and
bright — but he just makes me look so much lovelier
and cleaner and brighter.
I think Isabella could also testify to the
Problem with Relatives, as could her mean
brother, Old Worm-Swallower
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Monday 09
Dear Dumb Diary,
Are you even allowed to re-tell on
somebody? See, Isabella knows that Mr. Devon
forgot to punish me for gluing a picture to her head,
and so she dropped him a note reminding
him. SHE RE-TOLD. You can’t re-tell on
somebody, can you?
I was pretty angry about it when I was called
down to the office again to get lectured about
the dangers of getting something glued to you and
how not gluing things to each other was the glue
that held society together, or whatever Assistant
Principal Devon was going to say this time. (It’s still
my shoes, isn’t it, Isabella? They make me look 20
or something.)
We’re missing a mean office lady now, of
course, and the other Mean Office Ladies
were out pricing a new cauldron or something, so I
just walked right into Assistant Principal Devon’s
office, only to see the unmistakably glorious back
of Angeline’s flawless blond head. For a moment I
found myself fantasizing about all of the terrific
punishments Angeline might be getting.
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But suddenly she turned around and she was
wearing Assistant Principal Devon’s old glasses,
which magnified the Pure Beauty of her eyes
(the exact same color as a blue Popsicle) about
a million jillion times, and this time I screamed a
little because Pure Beauty was just never meant
to be magnified that much, either.
My scream made her scream and I stumbled
backward into the same counter that took out the
Mean Office Lady. As a self-trained ballerina, I
would have easily recovered, except that these new
shoes are a little slippery on the bottom, and I took
it right in the head.
Next thing I knew, they had given me
The Small Cold Thing to put on my head. The
Small Cold Thing is the absolute highest
form of medical treatment they can give you at
school — it’s practically their version of a heart
transplant — so I guess I must have hit my head
hard enough to nearly take it off.
They called my mom to come get me, but
Aunt Carol came instead. I have to say, Dumb Diary,
that Assistant Principal Devon and Aunt Carol sure
were not weeping and wringing their hands fretfully
the way I would expect to be wept and wrung over
35
while I was almost dying. In fact, they seemed to be
sort of — but this can’t be true — chit
chatting.
Ugh!EMERGENCY!!!!! Have to stop
writing. Stinker ate something Mom made yesterday
and, believe it or not, Mom’s cooking actually
smells even worse when you run it through the
antique digestive system of an old fat beagle.
Must. . . make ... it. . . to. . . door. . .
eyes . . . burning. . . .
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Tuesday 10
Dear Dumb Diary,
I had to sleep on the couch last night
because Stinker committed that Odor Crime in
my room and even though Mom would usually just
make me sleep in there, anyway, I pointed out that
the combination of Beagle Fumes and my head
injury could be disastrous. I told her about this
one girl I heard of from a different school that was
camping and had to spend the entire night in a tent
with an eleven-year-old poodle that had eaten four
burritos. When they found her the next morning, she
was just a little pile of ash. I might have made part
of that up, but Mom let me sleep on the couch, and
since I was downstairs I heard my Aunt Carol roll
in around 11:30 and talk to my mom in the kitchen
while I expertly pretended to be asleep.
Pretending to be asleep is just about the best
way to eavesdrop as long as you do it well. Don’t
scrunch your eyes closed too hard, and don’t snore
like they do in cartoons.
I couldn’t hear them very well, but it was all
made painfully clear to me this morning when Aunt
Carol drove me to school and PARKED THE CAR!
This afforded me an early morning look at Miss
Bruntford (the lunchroom monitor) because she
also monitors the parking lot in the morning, and
is there to helpfully tell people exactly where they
can’t park. This is earlier than I had ever planned to