Dumbness is a Dish Best Served Cold (Dear Dumb Diary: Deluxe) Read online

  Dumbness Is a Dish

  Best Served Cold

  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 #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

  Year Two #5: You Can Bet on That

  Year Two #6: Live Each Day To The Dumbest

  Jim Benton’s Tales from Mackerel Middle School

  DELUXE

  DEAR DUMB DIARY,

  BY JAMIE KELLY

  SCHOLASTIC INC.

  Dumbness Is a Dish

  Best Served Cold

  Copyright © 2016 by Jim Benton

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920.

  scholastic

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  associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  dear

  dumb

  diary

  is a registered trademark of Jim Benton.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility

  for author or third- party websites or their content.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this

  publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered,

  or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or

  by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without

  the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to

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

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of

  the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living

  or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data available

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-93293-6

  First printing, July 2016

  Page design by Yaffa Jaskoll

  For Shea, Ella, and Elaina.

  Thanks to Kristen LeClerc, Shannon Penney,

  Abby McAden, Sarah Evans, Yaffa Jaskoll,

  and Emily Rader.

  Dumbness Is a Dish

  Best Served Cold

  Dear Whoever Is Reading My Dumb Diary,

  We all know that we’re

  not

  supposed to read

  other people’s diaries. We’re all mature enough

  to understand that certain things are just

  private, and we should just keep our

  nosy

  noses

  out of other people’s business.

  But honestly, I sort of can’t blame you for

  being a horrible, nosy person. I mean, if I knew

  somebody who had been involved with a

  Big

  Weird Thing

  like

  The Big Weird Thing

  that I’ve been involved with, I would probably

  behave like the type of horrible turd who reads

  other people’s diaries.

  Yeah, right.

  Who are we kidding?

  Of course I wouldn’t.

  I know that reading another person’s diary

  can reduce the amount of money you earn one

  day, add unwanted calories to your diet, and can

  result in tooth decay, intense blondness, and a

  whole bunch of other things nobody likes.

  Trust me, I’m doing you a favor here.

  Put down the diary and walk

  away slowly.

  Signed,

  P.S.

  Oh yeah, everything in here is true. I swear.

  At least, as true as it

  needs

  to be.

  SUNDAY 01

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  So the carton says this stuff we buy is 2% milk.

  Am I the only one who wonders what the other 98% is?

  It could be anything, right? Mouthwash, udder

  sweat

  .

  .

  .

  It just seems to me that what we really would

  like to know is what MOST of the stuff in there is

  —

  not

  just the 2% that’s milk.

  At our house, for my cereal I can use 2% milk, or

  coffee creamer, or skim milk, which my mom buys

  because she says it’s helping her lose weight.

  But she really hates drinking it, so my dad uses

  it in his coffee so she won’t have to. He hates it, too,

  but he drinks it for her out of love.

  Sometimes I feed it to the dogs out of my love

  for them both.

  At breakfast, I usually have one of these cereals

  to choose from:

  We might have WheatyOs, which are like little

  dehydrated clown lips. Or we could have the

  Fibergrunt Flakes, which, based upon what I’ve

  heard about fiber, are eaten mostly because you also

  want to poo them. Or we might even have the

  Frosted

  Crispy Wonderfuls, which are purchased just for

  me

  —

  but my parents secretly eat them, so those are

  gone about four hours after they’re purchased.

  There’s also always oatmeal, but I never eat that

  unless it’s really cold out and I want to eat livestock

  feed. Or if the criminals that are holding me hostage

  are forcing me to eat it. (It’s probably the main way

  you’ll know that I’m being held hostage, and you should

  call the police.)

  And that’s it. Those are my choices.

  Well, on a GOOD day those are my choices. On a

  good day, Life lets me choose between the Fibergrunt

  Flakes and oatmeal. With skim milk.

  I’ve always wished there was a way to demand

  that Life takes you out for pancakes.

  Dear Dumb Diary again,

  I’ve decided not to do things like usual, Dumb

  Diary, because I want to tell you the entire story of

  THE BIG WEIRD THING without going day by day.

  So this is more like one gigantic diary entry that I’ll just

  split up into chapters whenever I feel like it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  See? Just like that. At any given moment, I could

  just sur


  CHAPTER FOUR

  prise you with a new chapter.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I could even skip them. I might not even give

  them numbers. I might just give them names.

  CHAPTER SYLVIA

  Okay, names don’t really work. Numbers. I’m

  going to use numbers.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  EATING. ALL THE TIME, EATING.

  WHAT IS IT WITH YOU?

  The Big Weird Thing has a lot to do with

  food, so when you read this, it might seem like I spent

  a month or two doing nothing but eating. I did other

  interesting things, too, like sitting around and sleeping

  and stuff, but I just want to tell you about this one

  BIG WEIRD THING, so you’ll have to imagine the

  other stuff.

  CHAPTER NINE

  NATURE’S BEAUTIFUL CRUELTY

  Isabella says there’s a beautiful and

  elegant harmony in Nature that makes it so your

  parents get old and feeble and unable to fight back at

  about the same time you want to throw them out of the

  house so you can keep it for yourself.

  Unfortunately, she says, Modern Science has

  interfered with this gentle balance by giving us

  medicine and nutrition that keep our parents

  artificially

  strong. They’re wrongly able to defend

  themselves for decades past what is really right.

  We’re all angry about this, sure, but it’s hard for

  us to blame Modern Science for anything. It’s

  given us the method by which we can miraculously turn

  a bowlful of various types of sands and powders into

  something as magical as cake. All we have to do is

  add heat and a raw egg, which is really pretty much

  just a liquefied chicken, and not something that you

  would usually add to dessert without Science telling

  you to.

  Modern Science has also given us phones,

  computers, decorative pillows, and those X-ray

  machines at the airports that let us know if anybody is

  trying to get on an aircraft without underwear on.

  We love Modern Science.

  Seriously, would you want to live in a world

  without decorative pillows? Or blenders? Or have

  underwearless people sitting right next to you on

  a plane?

  You know what we’d call smoothies if we didn’t

  have blenders?

  Fruit.

  And who needs that?

  When you think about it, many of our best

  modern foods are smoothies. Look at that bowl of

  soup: carrots, potatoes, onions, celery, beef,

  tomatoes. Soup is essentially a smoothie somebody

  made out of a whole farm. Yum.

  I’m getting off track here. The whole discussion

  with Isabella about the elegance of throwing your

  parents

  out in the cold came up because of math

  class. I can explain.

  Years ago, Isabella had a goldfish. She named it

  Golda. Back then, her mom wouldn’t let her have a dog

  because they already had to take care of Isabella and

  Isabella’s mean older brothers, and I’ve always had the

  impression that if there had been a way for Isabella’s

  mom to leave one of those three people at the pet

  store, she would, but since she couldn’t, she decided

  that she would leave all the dogs at the pet store

  instead.

  Still, Isabella always felt that she could change

  her mom’s mind. She thought that if she kept the

  fishbowl clean and the fish stayed healthy, then she

  would be able to talk her mom into getting a dog.

  Oh

  —

  and she also felt that if she could just

  teach Golda a trick, then her mom would have to

  say yes.

  One trick.

  Goldfish are pretty. They’re like tiny mermaids

  but with deformed faces. And they’re relaxing to

  watch, but there’s a reason you never see them

  guarding buildings, or herding sheep, or leading blind

  swimmers around in a lake.

  They’re

  not smart

  —

  not as smart as dogs

  anyway.

  But that didn’t stop Isabella.

  She wanted to train Golda to leap out of the

  water like a dolphin. She would sit patiently and watch

  Golda, and every time Golda made a tiny move toward

  the surface, Isabella would hold a little flake of food

  just above the water and say, “Jump!”

  And every time Golda didn’t jump, Isabella would

  pull her out of the bowl and yell at her for it.

  She had to secretly replace Golda five times

  before she rethought her methods. She had learned

  that yelling is pretty hard on a goldfish, even though

  she thought the first three fish were just pretending to

  be

  asleep to get out of jumping practice.

  She also learned that rewards didn’t really work

  any better than punishments because:

  A) Goldfish can’t hear underwater

  —

  screaming

  doesn’t seem to help because they may not have ears.

  B) Goldfish may not have dolphin jumping

  skills, even though they are both fish. (Yes, I know

  —

  dolphins are really mammals. Not the time to

  argue with her.)

  C) The more recent goldfish may have had deep

  feelings for the earlier goldfish and now they would

  just never cooperate with Isabella out of revenge.

  Isabella still had a very difficult time accepting

  these things, though, and continued to try to teach a

  goldfish a trick.

  Just like my math teacher, Mr. Henzy.

  I give Mr. Henzy a lot of credit for trying to

  teach me math.

  I mean, he knows it’s not going to happen, I

  know it’s not going to happen, EVERYBODY knows

  it’s not going to happen

  —

  but he still politely looks

  directly at me during the class, as if something might

  actually be sinking in for once. His faith in me is kind of

  adorable and tragic at the same time. One can’t

  help but think of tiny Isabella dangling a sad little

  flake of fish food for her half- witted goldfish.

  Is there a word for that? Maybe it’s

  “AWWWW-ful.”

  Yes. Exactly. So Mr. Henzy did this AWWWW-

  ful thing where he tried to teach us Personal

  Finance, which is like the math you really and truly

  will

  HAVE to use to buy things and save money

  —

  not

  the kind of math where you might be walking down the

  street one day and suddenly have to know things about

  the area of a trapezoid.

  To start things off, he had us write down our

  guesses of how much a house, a car, and a month’s

  worth of groceries cost. Then he had us take those

  papers home and get our parents to sign them.

  I know this seems crazy. These are things really

  only an adult needs to know about, and I won’t be one

  of those for centuries.

  Okay, maybe one century. ABOUT one century.

  I love my parents, and
I want them to have a

  good time, so why wouldn’t I enjoy hearing the

  trickling music of their gentle laughter?

  Well, maybe because, when they read my cost

  guesses, they laughed so hard that my mom had

  to go change and my dad couldn’t breathe, which

  disturbed the dogs and made them bite each other.

  I called Isabella to ask what her parents did

  when she showed them her paper, and she said they

  grounded her. Not for what she’d written down,

  but because she doesn’t like being laughed at, and

  she decided that the best way to make them stop

  doing it involved her dad’s bare foot and the

  stomping of it.

  I would have called Angeline, but she probably

  guessed the answers perfectly exactly to the penny,

  and I really didn’t want to hear how well she did.

  It’s one of the things I’ve learned about

  Angeline. Sure, on the outside, she’s all beautiful and

  smart and kind to people, but when you go way down

  deep inside

  —

  way down deep

  —

  you discover that she’s

  actually

  more beautiful and smart and kind.

  This makes you hate her even more, but you then

  realize that even though that is the most natural

  reaction, it’s terrible to hate somebody for being

  wonderful. And your hatred of Angeline for this will only

  make her look even better compared to you. So just by

  standing next to you, as you are becoming more

  terrible, she is actually improving

  —

  and you’re

  causing it.

  And that’s not all. While you’re standing there,

  simmering in your own hate gravy, you are

  actually becoming worse because that’s what

  hate simmering does to a person.

  So anyway, the safest assumption is that

  Angeline got the numbers right, and it’s best to just

  live with that and not whip up a whole batch of

  gravy by asking about it.