Dear Dumb Diary #5: Can Adults Become Human? Read online

  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

  CAN ADULTS

  BECOME HUMAN?

  SCHOLASTIC INC.

  Jim Benton’s Tales from Mackerel Middle School

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  publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc.,

  Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-29556-7

  Copyright © 2004 by Jim Benton

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.

  SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks

  and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  DEAR DUMB DIARY is a registered trademark of Jim Benton.

  First printing, May 2006

  For The Office Ladies,

  most of whom

  are really and truly nice.

  Thanks to Mary K., Summer, and Griffin, who

  help more than anybody could ever imagine.

  Thanks to Maria Barbo, who worked from

  afar, and Shannon Penney, who did her work

  from aclose.

  Thanks also to Steve Scott, Susan Jeffers

  Casel, and Craig Walker.

  And most of all, thanks to the DDD readers.

  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, I did NOT give you

  permission, so stop it.

  If you are my parents, then YES, I know

  I am not allowed to call people idiots

  and dopes or to talk about gross bodily

  functions and all that, but this is a

  diary, and I didn’t actually “say” any

  of it. I wrote it. And, if you punish me

  for it, then I will know that you read my

  diary, which I am not giving you permis-

  sion 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.

  Signed,

  PS : What kind of animal reads a person’s

  diary, anyway?

  PPS : Oh! I bet I know. I bet it’s one of

  those big, dirty animals that eventually

  ends up on a bun with mustard and onions.

  Hint, hint.

  Monday 02

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  teachers don't fart

  I spend something like eight months a

  year, seven hours a day with teachers. If they

  did, I’d know it. Moms do it. Dads do it. Beagles do

  it (sometimes so bad that your eyes burn and your

  lungs might try to escape by jumping out your

  mouth).

  Even I do it. One time I had a fart that lasted

  so long, that around the middle of the fart I was

  thinking back to when the fart began.

  Anyway, I was thinking about teachers and

  their intestinal gas today in school and that may

  have prevented me from learning anything. Maybe

  the teachers just need to try harder. (To teach me

  things, that is. Not to cut one.)

  1

  Seriously though, it’s hard for me to blame

  teachers. It’s probably pretty tough to stand up

  in front of us normal human beings and try to

  convince us that the equator is interesting, or that

  the clothes that the people in Wheretheheckistan

  wear are beautiful. (Fashions in other countries

  sometimes appear to be based on one person daring

  another person to wear something in public.)

  Fortunately, I do have one teacher who I

  always like: Miss Anderson, my art teacher. She’s

  my BTF, which is like a BFF but it’s for teachers.

  She is pretty enough to be a waitress, and she

  notices important things like when I create my own

  private glitter blends. (Currently, I’m using a secret

  mixture of gold, red, and magenta. It’s pretty much

  magnificent.)

  Art class would be perfect if Angeline (Miss

  Blondy BlondWad) wasn’t in it. Angeline is not

  an artist and when she stands next to something,

  she has a way of making it look less pretty by

  comparison. Which, when you think about it, is a

  form of vandalism that sadly, our legal system has

  no penalty for yet.

  Oh, and Mom FINALLY got me the shoes I

  wanted. Dad, being a dude, only has, like, two pairs

  of shoes and can’t fully appreciate how much you

  can need a pair of shoes that you don’t need at all.

  Mom is totally immune to my begging for

  most things, but since she is a girl — or used to be

  one — she has way too many shoes and sympathizes

  with other females who also want too many shoes.

  Anyway, they make me look 20 or something.

  Tuesday 03

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  My social studies teacher, Mr. VanDoy, never

  smiles. I know that’s hard to believe, because

  everybody smiles about something, right?

  Isabella smiles when her brothers get in

  trouble. Angeline smiles when she thinks about

  how much prettier she is than, like, a waterfall or a

  unicorn. I smile when I think about a unicorn kicking

  Angeline over a waterfall. But Mr. VanDoy doesn’t

  smile at all. I wonder if when you become an adult,

  you can lose your sense of humor the way you lose

  your teeth or hair or fashion sense.

  Our social studies class is studying animal

  social groups now, which means we are learning

  how ants and chimps and birds live together and

  tolerate one another. (Personally, I hate ants so

  much that even if I was an ant, I don’t think I could

  resist stomping on myself
.)

  5

  Isabella says we can do our homework just

  by watching the educational channels, although

  it seems like every time I turn those on they are

  showing the footage of the cheetah running down

  the cute little antelope and not the stuff we need

  for class.

  Isabella says that if she had been born a cute

  little antelope and saw the cheetah coming, she

  would just kick another cute little antelope in the

  shins so it couldn’t run very fast, and the cheetah

  would get

  it

  instead of her.

  Pretty smart, huh? Except I’m pretty

  sure that if Isabella had been born a cute little

  antelope, all the cute little antelopes in Africa

  would be hunting and eating cheetahs by now. As

  well as elephants and human beings. I really and

  truly don’t think we’re thankful often enough that

  Isabella was not born a cute little antelope.

  7

  On the subject of Isabella, I noticed her

  notice my new shoes today, and I’m sure I noticed

  her noticing how they make me look 20, but I also

  noticed her trying not to be noticed, so I did the

  polite thing and unnoticed her doing it, because

  that’s what friends do.

  Dumb Diary, did I ever tell you how Isabella

  and I became friends? It was instantaneous. It’s

  what people call Like at First Sight. It was way

  back in second grade. On the first day of school, our

  teacher, Miss Baker, was asking us all to stand up

  and say our names. Isabella stood and said, “I’m

  Isabella Vinchella,” and Lewis Clarke giggled.

  It took three teachers and half the class to

  pull Isabella off Lewis, who she seemed to be playing

  like a fat little xylophone. (He actually made higher

  notes when she punched him in certain places.)

  Violence is never the answer, of course, unless your

  question is “Hey Isabella, what’s the answer?” But I

  admired the fact that she was like some sort of

  dangerous little mousetrap that you just should not

  stick your fingers in. I told her so, and she liked the

  description.

  We became instant friends, and have been that

  way ever since — although sometimes Isabella seems

  less like a mousetrap and more like an atomic bomb

  that you should not stick your fingers in.

  Wednesday 04

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Today in art class, Miss Anderson asked us to

  give her ideas for our next assignment. I suggested

  that we make self-portraits with a lot of glitter and

  jewels. Angeline suggested collages (

  Ugh!

  ). Isabella

  suggested that we decorate padlocks to put on our

  bedroom doors so our brothers can’t get in our stuff.

  Although her judgment is usually excellent,

  this time Miss Anderson went with Angeline’s

  suggestion of collages. I suspect this was because

  of some kind of law that says she has to offer a

  certain number of projects for The Artistically

  Imparied each year. Since not everybody in

  the world has what it takes to grow up to be an

  important artist like I might become if I decide not

  to be a scientist who also makes a lot of money

  dancing on TV, art teachers occasionally must offer

  projects that the kids who were born with toes for

  fingers can do — like collages. A collage is when you

  cut things out of a magazine and glue them onto a

  piece of paper. These are not terribly challenging

  projects to complete.

  Once on a field trip to a petting zoo, I saw

  this goat that had eaten a newspaper and some

  cotton candy and he had made his own little

  collages all over the barnyard. Really quite amazing

  work for a goat.

  I would’ve gotten one, too, except that the

  teacher caught me putting some goat art in my

  lunch box.

  11

  These collage projects wouldn’t be so bad

  if Miss Anderson subscribed to a variety of

  magazines, but most of the old magazines she

  brings in have headlines like COOKING SMALL

  MEALS FOR ONE IS NOT NECESSARILY

  SAD or HEY! MAYBE DOGS ARE BETTER

  THAN HUSBANDS .

  She also has a lot of bride magazines, but

  somebody has blacked out the teeth or drawn

  arrows through the heads of most of the pictures,

  which makes them useless unless your collage is

  about a kid that lives near a church and really likes

  archery but has super bad aim.

  Isabella says the magazines mean that Miss

  Anderson is totally desperate to get a husband,

  which is odd because she is even more beautiful

  than Mrs. LaBeau down the street, who has already

  had five or six husbands by now. Isabella says that

  it means that Miss Anderson must do something

  so BAD that it outweighs her PRETTY.Helpfully,

  Isabella has the ratios all worked out.

  Isabella said that Miss Anderson is pretty

  enough to eat salad for breakfast, let’s say, but

  not pretty enough to brush her teeth with ketchup.

  Isabella also said that Angeline is pretty enough to

  brush her teeth with mustard, but not pretty enough

  to burn down SeaWorld.

  Isabella said that she, herself, is pretty

  enough to put mayonnaise on her popcorn, but

  not pretty enough to burn down SeaWorld unless

  Angeline and Miss Anderson help her. Isabella

  says that I' m pretty enough to be an exhibit at

  SeaWorld. (I suspect she is jealous of my shoes. I’m

  telling you, they make me look 20 or something!)

  13

  There was a time when I would not have

  known how to react to something like that from

  Isabella, but after being her friend all these years,

  it was perfectly clear to me what I had to do. . .

  After that, Isabella spent most of the

  afternoon trying to remove the picture of

  the toothless, arrow-headed bride that I glued to

  her hair. Guess that makes us even.

  Thursday 05

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Okay. It turns out that you can’t exactly get

  even with Isabella. I had forgotten about the time

  one of her mean older brothers ate a chocolate

  bar that she had been saving and she snuck into

  his room that night and quietly put an earthworm

  in his sleeping mouth and then taped it shut. One

  can hardly imagine his panic. Now her brother gets

  a little sick every time he sees candy, and THAT is

  what Isabella calls "even."

  While it’s true that THE EARTHWORMING

  was over chocolate and Isabella has a huge

  chocolate- dependency problem, Isabella can

  "Bring It" — as she likes to say — even when it’s

  not about chocolate.

  So, first thing this morning, she "brought

  It " to me, and I was called to go down to the office.

  But let’s be reasonable about placing blame

  here. Yes , Isabella told on me for gluing something

&
nbsp; to her, but the collage thing was Angeline’s idea

  in the first place, so she really is mostly to blame

  for this.

  15

  I believe that there are schools with nice

  office ladies that are pretty and don’t smell like

  discount coffee and butterscotch candies. In fact,

  it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that ALL other

  schools are like that. Just not my school.

  Now, to be fair, it’s not just the office ladies.

  Many adults have a need to drink coffee all day so

  that they can remain alert and have bad breath.

  But the candy is a different story. Our office

  ladies ENJOY being mean, especially to me, and

  a huge fishbowl of chocolate won’t do that to you

  the way a huge fishbowl of butterscotch will. Here

  is why: Every time they look at the bowl, the office

  ladies think: “We could have bought good candy. We

  hate these hard butterscotch candies. Butterscotch

  candies aren’t good for anything. I think we should

  take it out on the next kid who walks in here.”

  And that kid is usually me.

  Isabella had told on me to Assistant Principal

  Devon, who wears ties but is nice, anyway. He said

  I shouldn’t glue things in people’s hair and blah -

  blah be kind to each other and blah - blah what

  kind of a world would this be if blah - blah - blah.

  He was just getting ready to come up with

  some sort of punishment when I asked him what

  happened to his glasses — he used to have these

  HUGE glasses he could probably see molecules

  with —and he said that his niece talked him into

  getting eye surgery so he wouldn’t need them

  anymore, which I have to admit was a pretty good

  idea, because without his glasses he looked almost

  handsome for an old guy (He's probably

  forty!). Not that I’m an expert on Isabella’s newest

  good - looking - enough -formula, but I

  suppose that he is still not handsome enough to burn