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

  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.

  She’s planning on moving to the area.

  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 . . .

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  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

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  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