Never do Anything, ever
Dear Dumb Diary,
From New York Times bestselling author Jim Benton
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,
nEvER DO AnYTHinG,
ever
SCHOLASTIC INC.
Jim Benton’s Tales from Mackerel Middle School
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Con-
ventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted,
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mation regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention:
Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
e-ISBN 978-0-545-64945-2
Copyright © 2005 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 Scholastic printing, November 2005
For the teachers we put up with
and the ones that put up with us.
With many thanks to Mary K, who helped out even more
than usual on this one, and the team at Scholastic,
who have inner beauty and outer beauty, but let’s not
quibble over the exact amounts here.Thanks to my
glamorous genius editor, Maria Barbo, who actually
chose those words to describe herself, our fabulous art
director Steve Scott, our scrupulous production editor
Susan Jeffers Casel, the magnanimous Shannon Penney,
and Craig Walker, who is Maria’s boss, and therefore
required by law to be even more ingenious
and glamorous than she.
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
that I am not allowed to call people idiots
and dipwads and blondwads and half-
wits- and turds and all that, but this is a
diary, and I didn’t actually “call” them
anything. 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 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.
Signed,
PS: Angeline, if this is you reading my diary, then
you should know that reading another person’s
diary is a federal crime, and a very ugly thing
to do, and no amount of staggering beauty — inner
or outer — can compensate for it.
PPS: Which means that you stand a good chance
ever watched any of those REALITY POLICE
VIDEOS on TV, you know that most of those girls
would need an EXTREME MAKEOVER just to
achieve the delicate good looks of a warthog.
Sunday 01
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella and I happened to see Angeline at
the store today. Isabella wanted to buy some of
that hair-removing foam because her arms are
too weirdly hairy. I tried to talk her out of it, not
because her arms aren’t hairy (because they ARE
kind of chimpy), but because little hairless naked
baby arms would be way more weird.
Angeline was sniffing around over by the hair
stuff, obviously shopping for whatever secret things
she uses to keep her hair all perfect.
As you may recall, Dumb Diary, Isabella
is a master of disguise. She quickly grabbed us
some sunglasses and hats so we could secretly
follow Angeline and see what she bought. (Quick
note on disguises: As you’re walking, you have
to occasionally lower the magazine you’re hiding
behind so you don’t knock over a display of baby-
bottle nipples.)
Surprisingly, Angeline didn’t buy shampoo
or conditioner or coloring gel or hair straightener
or unstraightener or anything big like that. She only
bought one little item and she carelessly led us
right to it. A BARRETTE.
It must be some sort of special barrette
because Angeline, as everyone knows, is beautiful
to the point where you know it probably even
actually sickens her sometimes to look in the
mirror.
Ha - ha, Angeline!Let’s see how you
stack up to me now that I also possess your
precious, secret, simple barrette.
I would’ve bought more than one except the
store guy wanted me to pay for the magazines I
wrecked during the nipple event.
Monday 02
Dear Dumb Diary,
Okay, these barrettes are not as simple
as you may think. I mean, sure, you can sort of
pull your hair aside with one, and that’s okay, I
guess, but Angeline must have some sort of special
technique for attaching it to her head, because I
couldn’t exactly duplicate her results.
I wanted to practice on Stinker’s ears a
couple of times to get the hang of it, but Stinker
is very, very sensitive about his ears and it upsets
him to have them touched, so I had to sit on him to
do it.
Anyway, I think I finally got it, and tomorrow I
am really going to have it going on. Here’s a drawing
of me having it going on. (I think I may also be
all up in that, but I’m not sure exactly what that
means.)
Tuesday 03
Dear Dumb Diary,
Remember
Hudson Rivers (eighth-cutest
guy in my grade)? I am very sorry to report that he
has a vision problem. Not only did he utterly fail to
notice the spectacularness of My New Hair
Accessory when he was talking to me at my
locker today, but when Angeline walked right past
and inflicted Beauty upon him, he failed to even
notice her. I wish I could have enjoyed the moment
more, except I felt bad about Hudson’s tragedy - I
mean, everybody notices Angeline.
At first, I wondered if maybe Hudson just
wanted to talk to me, and wasn’t that interested
in Angeline at all. I mean, c’mon, he did write me
a poem once. But fortunately, Isabella was on
hand to explain how wrong I was. She says that
people who don’t notice Angeline have some sort of
problem like:
If the tragedy is limited to Hudson’s eyes,
I said that he could just get glasses, and then
Isabella flew into this huge crazy rage about glasses
and how they destroy your life and how she would
When Isabella says she would do “anything,”
you should believe her. One time when she was
five, she physically attacked a mall Santa for
not bringing her a panda bear the previous
Christmas. It was pretty terrifying. When the
paramedics finally arrived, he had lost a lot of nog,
and was shaking like a bowl full of jelly.
Tuesday and Thursday are my Phys Ed days.
Thankfully, it’s at the very end of the day, so I don’t
have to walk around stinkfully afterward and we
can also hear the buses line up right outside the
gym, which is a handy way to tell time since the only
clock in our gym, like most gym clocks, was broken
by a basketball back in 1945.
As usual, we ran laps in the gym today, which
made me feel like I was going to have a baby out of
my left side.
I calmly suggested to Mr. Dover that he
find something new for us to do as I lay on my
back and tried to massage out a cramp that had
developed inside the cramp that was inside the
cramp in my leg.
He looked at me for a moment, and I think he
felt some pity. Or disgust. Anyway, he said, “Okay.”
I’ll bet it’s going to be something great!
Wednesday 04
Dear Dumb Diary,
Today, Mom made me gather up old clothes
and junk I didn’t want anymore. She must be giving
them to charity or something. It has been a while
since I cleaned out the drawers. Here are a few of
the items I decided to part with:
The old clothes made me think back
to simpler times, and wonder why I ever wanted
to grow up. And then I saw this shirt I used to wear
that has this stupid duck in a cowboy hat on it.
The main feature of this shirt was the massive
permanent chocolate pudding stain on the front. I
wondered how many times Mom had dressed me in
that Big Ol’ Pudding Stain and let me go out
in public.
If my future children are reading
my diary years from now, here’s a tip: If
you spill pudding on your shirt, don’t tell Grandma.
She will let it rot on there until it grows mold or
other funky- smelling fuzzy stuff. Tell Mommy Jamie
and she will lovingly make Daddy wash it.
And while I’m talking to The Future,here’s
a little note to myself, in case I am reading this
diary years from now when my mom is all super old:
Dear Adult Jamie:
Your mom loves you and did her best raising
you, but you’re really hot and really rich now
anyway. Sure, she made just a few mistakes, and so
she should feel good about that because it means
that you only have to get even with her for a mere
handful of things. Here are a few ideas I had just to
get the old revenge ball rolling:
Thursday 05
Dear Dumb Diary,
You know what Thursday is, right, Dumb
Diary? It’s Meat Loaf Day at school. (Have I
mentioned that before?) Today’s meat loaf tasted
like morning- breath-baked- into- loaf-
form,which means it was a distinct improvement
over last week’s meat loaf.
In Phys Ed this afternoon, Mr. Dover (His
first name is really Ben. Can you believe it?) told
us that he took my suggestion to try something
new, and we will be starting a month of some new
Phys Ed program called something like Outward
Adventure Outreach Something. It’s
supposed to build teamwork, which is when a whole
bunch of people work together to do something
wrong instead of doing it wrong one at a time.
So Dover began by putting us into little
groups of four. Of course, Angeline and Hudson
wound up in the same little group because Angeline
has some sort of Evil Power over the Universe.
Margaret was also in Angeline’s group. (Margaret is
the school pencil eater, which means that she is the
only one whose number 2 pencils actually wind
up as her Number Twos.) Fortunately, Mr. Dover
made Isabella the fourth member of that group, so
at least I have somebody to spy on Angeline and
Hudson for me.
My group was me, Mike Pinsetti (he’s the
nickname king of our school, and he might have
a crush on me - YUCK! - and he is a huge human
sack of turds), Anika Martin, and That Ugly Kid
Whose Name I Forget —who I am going to
abbreviate as T.U.K.W.N.I.F.
Our first exercise was called Trust Falls.
This is when one group member closes their eyes and
slowly tips over backward, trusting their teammates
to catch them before they hit the ground.
Isabella has mean big brothers, so her
ability to trust human beings has decayed away to
nothing. Isabella could no more summon the trust
to fall backward into somebody’s arms than she
could fall backward into a wood chipper.
This got her into trouble with Mr. Dover
because gym teachers get upset if you don’t go
all jocky and high-fivey about their little sporty
events. Which was good, since it kept me from
getting in trouble when Pinsetti cracked his head
on the gym floor because I may have been staring
across the gym at Angeline and Hudson when I was
supposed to be not letting Pinsetti and his trusting
head down. But in my defense, Pinsetti and his head
are probably too trusting.
Anyway, Mr. Dover switched Isabella with
Anika, so now I don’t have anybody to listen in on
whatever Angeline is saying to Hudson, whose vision
seems to have miraculously been restored to normal
as far as staring at Angeline goes.
Of course, she did have her barrette artfully
embracing one silky ribbon of flawless blond hair,
and Hudson may have been fixated on that alone.
Friday 06
Dear Dumb Diary,
Angelin
e is doing some sort of Walk-A-Thon
for charity this weekend, and she asked Isabella
and me to sponsor her.
This is where we donate a dime for every mile
she walks. I know, it sounds good, but Angeline
doesn’t just walk in a straight line. Eventually,
she turns around and walks back. If she just kept
walking and walking, I’d give her a hundred bucks.
But she said it’s for some sort of amazing cause like
Sending Stuffed Animals Full of Candy to
Hungry Toddlers in Wheretheheckistan.
I don’t know. We said okay.
Later, as we considered Angeline’s sacrifice
and her willingness to volunteer her time and effort
for people she doesn’t know who live millions of
miles away, we had to admit . . .
Angeline is super stupid.
Saturday 07
Dear Dumb Diary,
Dad dropped me off at the salon today.
This is supposed to be one of the best hair salons
in the whole city, and the stylist, Collette, is
really and truly from France or someplace where
she graduated from the greatest hair college in
the world. Collette usually cries at the end of our
appointments, and lots of times she asks me to
leave through the back door, but I think she has
to keep seeing me because they made her take
some sort of oath back at hair college. It’s like
how doctors can’t just walk past you if you’re in an
accident. And let’s face it, my hair is bleeding to
death on the sidewalk.
I really didn’t even need a haircut, but
I asked her to put in the barrette. She spent a
long time dealing with it and couldn’t get it to
work. She said my hair was rejecting the barrette
like a transplanted organ, but if I wanted,
she could phone a Barrette
Consultant of hers to talk her
through the procedure.