Geek Chic (5 page)
Authors: Margie Palatini
(More on slime later if I have time.)
z.z.
Wait a secondo. This is only Chapter Three?
(Agree. That number two was a long one.
If you want, you can make this four.)
Or five. Whatever.
Mom: Zoey? What are you doing?
Me: Uh … nothing?
Me: Uh … nothing?
WRONG AnsweR, Zoey!
Mom:
Nothing?
Me:
(Uh-oh.)
Mom: How about cleaning your room?
I knew I should have gone with
(b).
I was thinking for one second to go with
(d)
if there was a
(d)—
which would have been:
“I’m in my room
working on my extra-credit
history report about
William Howard Taft.”
Who, incidentally, was president from 1909 to 1913, which was slash is a whole other century ago.
(Googled him too. He is not even close to being as popular as any princess, real or pretend, which is sort of sad. After all, he was a president of the United States, and he was at the dedication of the New York Public Library—the one with the cool lions—which is a pretty big deal.)
In actual poundage, WHT was 332 lbs, which is how he got stuck in his bathtub. No, not even making that up! One most serious wedgie. Can your brain even digital a naked president of the United States having to get dewedged from a bathtub? In the White House! I will probably get extra extra extra credit for this.
(Venus and I have discussed. EEEC is not nerdy.)
So, absolutely, (d) would have saved me from cleaning up my room for sure,
except
my mom knows the report isn’t due for two weeks, and even I wouldn’t be working on it that far in advance.
On a Saturday Morning?
When I usually stay in bed and peruse
(a two-dollar word choice)
my Scrabble dictionary?
Twelve days—maybe. But two weeks?
REALLY, that is just way too I’m-holding-my-stomach-from-laughing-so-hard unbelievable.
Only Simon Malachek and maybe Alex Shemtob, who The Bashleys think are both totaLLY un-you-know-what, do stuff like that—and they are much more-more-more than I am. Much.
(Maybe delete-cross-out-erase the ditto “Much.”)
Venus and I are still below fish food, chum bait, and frog scum in The World of Bashley Coolability. I stopped wearing green so they wouldn’t
ribbit
every time they see me. Whenever my fairy godmother gets here, I’m thinking she is going to have to immediately bippity me over to the pink side. Which, truthfully, I’m sort of worrying about because … pink is not my color. Especially when it’s pants. Then I look like a skinny stick of bubble gum.
Question:
Can a person be considered in any way cool if they look like gum?
Mom: Zoey? Are you straightening up your room?
Me:
Yeesh.
Who can think about neatness when you’re concentrating on extremely important stuff like finding a fairy godmother, William Howard Taft, or where-the-what you put your favorite shirt that has been mysteriously missing for almost three weeks and you can’t find AnYWHeRE?
Stuff piles up when you are in deep thought.
I’m more naturally a piler slash multiheaper slash dumper than a folder-hanger-upper.
Hangers are way overrated anyway.
And btw, totally NOT environmental.
Interesting Factoid:
A person collects almost one thousand wire hangers in his or her life, which is enough to reach the top of the Empire State Building two times.
I’m just trying to do my part and live a green life. I keep telling Mom, “Piling may not be neat, but it is the absolute PC-EC way to go.”
That, and using sticky notes.
Do you know how many trees I’m saving by using little pieces of paper instead of entire sheets? Practically an entire forest. Truly.
I wonder if I should do my entire President Taft report just on stickies?
Mom: Zoey?
Me:
(Double yeesh.)
The Official Zoey Zinevich Guide to Cleaning Up Your Room
Step 1: Pick up. Pick up. Pick up.
Step 2: Open any drawer.
Step 3: Shove. Shove. Shove.
(Trust me. It ready works. Try if.)
Actually, all this cleaning—well, sort of
cleaning (I’m only almost eleven. I don’t do bathroom swishing. Please!)
—has me feeling very Cinderella-ish. Which I’m thinking might be very good, because so far I haven’t hit the right century trying to contact my FG.
The only logical explanation I can think of is that there must be a whole lot of other people looking for a fairy godmother too. Since last Tuesday I’ve wished on twenty-seven stars, and still …
nothing.
I’m going to have to come up with some other ways of contacting her, because those grains of sand are zipping along. There are only 184 days before sixth grade, when you have to be you know-what.
If only she could just send me a sign. You know, point me in the right direction.
Hold the toilet brush!
(or maybe #2, 3, and 4 combined.)
Lightbulb Momento!
What is peeking out from under PILE #3?
… Sock, jeans, sock, sock, hoodie, tank, Millard
(my stuffed rabbit. What? You don’t have a stuffed something? … Yes, you do)
, sock, PBJ sandwich
(jelly still looks okay)
, sock, sock, striped tights, not-striped tights, plaid pants, sock, checked pants, seven dust bunny clumps
(which make very interesting sculptures)
, sock, one dried-up paintbrush, flannels, notebook divider, a penny, blue sock, green sock, argyle sock, tee, overalls, violin case
(I did Suzuki; now I play the piccolo)
, stale rice cake
(not really sure how you tell if it’s stale or not)
, broken tennis racket, underwear, more underwear (clean), two jigsaw puzzle pieces, Clue card (
Mr. Green
), four nickels, one dime, two tissues, soccer socks
(eeuw, not clean)
, DayGlo marker, one crumpled crossword puzzle, five wicked chartreuse stickies, seven yellow LEGOs, sweatpants, retainer
(so that’s where that went)
, sock, sock
(totally too many socks that don’t even match)
, a roll of orange duct tape, and—
Ta da!
My bowling shirt!
The Shirt.
In the Bedroom.
Under the Clothes.
Well, it’s not exactly
my
bowling shirt, since I don’t really bowl.
(Except for that one time at Eugenia Vandopoulos’s birthday party when I got nine gutter balls in a row. It was a record. For Eugenia’s party and the bowling alley.)
This shirt belonged to my great grandpop. Aunt Rootie calls it “retro and very vintage.”
(I think that’s good. At least it sounded good the way Aunt Rootie said it.)
Translated, I’m pretty positive it must mean “chic.” I mean, what else could it possibly mean?
The shirt is turquoise with yellow trim
and
with monograms front
and
back.
Yes, well, of course my name isn’t Ray, and I don’t know who, what, or where is
Grabowski’s Tool & Die Company.
But …
I think it works.
Sort of.
Kind of.
Maybe.
Don’t know.
WANTED
: Fairy godmother with wand-waving experience in hair, accessories, and chic bowling shirts. Start immediately. Look for Zoey.
181 days to you-know-what no sign of you-know-who
Was it really this hard for Cinderella?
Z.Z. Interesting Info Bite:
Did you know the first clothes dryer was invented in France in 1799? I think that is really stunning information, because who knew they even washed clothes in France in 1799?
Clothes dryers, while not exactly environmentally correct, because people should be hanging clothes on clotheslines but nobody knows what those are anymore, are still quite truly fabulous.
Especially when it comes to wrinkles.
And in spite of what happened to Fluffy. She was our kindergarten pet hamster, who one day ended up way too fluffed and very dead.
Billy Sherman took her home one weekend, and somehow she ended up in the Shermans’ clothes dryer. It was all molto tragico, or tristissimo as Mrs. Temlock-Fields would say. Very sad. Venus and I cried for two weeks.
(Yes. That story might have to be a whole other chapter.)
Anyway,
it is because a clothes dryer is exactly such an incredible invention that hanging up clothes is so not necessary. Just a few spins on wrinkle-free and who needs hangers?
I keep telling Mom, “Heaping is good.”
(A clothesline is way more EC, but it’s a toss-up with using nine hundred hangers. btw: The bowling shirt looks molto excellent with no wrinkles, and definitely chic.)
The coolability meter is going to be rocked.
I think.
Uh-oh.
