Perfect Girls Make Perfect Enemies
Dear Dumb Diary,
School was okay today. Actually, it was better than okay. Angeline got her long, beautiful hair tangled in one of the jillion things she has dangling from her backpack, and the school (who is now one of my main heroes) took a pair of scissors and snipped two feet of silky blond hair from the left side of her head, so now Angeline only looks like The Prettiest Girl In The World if you're standing on her right. (Although personally, I think she would look better if I was standing on her neck.)
School was okay today. Actually, it was better than okay. Angeline got her long, beautiful hair tangled in one of the jillion things she has dangling from her backpack, and the school (who is now one of my main heroes) took a pair of scissors and snipped two feet of silky blond hair from the left side of her head, so now Angeline only looks like The Prettiest Girl In The World if you're standing on her right. (Although personally, I think she would look better if I was standing on her neck.)
Dear Dumb Diary: Let's Pretend This Never Happened is the first book in the Dear Dumb Diary book series. It stars Jamie Kelly as she tries to steal Angeline's permanent record from the Principal's office in order to destroy Angeline's reputation as the popular girl.
It was partially adapted into the Hallmark TV Movie.
This is not your TV Tropes page. I can tell.
- Adults Are Useless: Played with. The school nurse is utterly inept at handling students who go to the nurse's office, but does cut off Angeline's hair.
- Back-Alley Doctor: The School Nurse, who's solution to everything is "lie down on the cot and rest".
- Blatant Lies: Jamie claims she isn't trying to be Angeline when she dyes her hair blonde, it was just the first dye she grabbed in the fourth store she looked.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Contains several:
- Isabella is less of the schemer she is in later books.
- Angeline has much stronger Alpha Bitch traits here than in most of the other books.
- an unnamed principal who doesn't appear in the later books appears as the school's authority figure instead of Assistant Principal Devon, whom is absent in this book.
- Stinker is not yet the gasshole he is in later books.
- It's one of the least focused books in the series story-wise (just almost bordering on Random Events Plot), possibly to imitate the feel of an actual diary.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Mike Pinsetti is known to give these out.
- One particular example is "Butt Buttlington", who's been referred to as "Butt Buttlington" for so long that nobody even knows what his original name was. It got so bad that even his mother referred to him as "Butt Buttlington".
- Near the beginning of the book Jamie Kelly gets the nickname "Peach Girl". Jamie Kelly is worried about either Mike Pinsetti or Angeline revealing "Peach Girl" to the world.
- Eventually Mike Pinsetti gets his own horrible nickname when Angeline calls him "Pin-Heady".
- Evil All Along: Subverted with Angeline initially, as the person she gave a horrible nickname to was Mike Pinsetti. Played straight near the end of the book when she reveals that her permanent record is so bad that, had she been found out as having thrown the slab of meatloaf at Miss Bruntford, she would have been expelled and she wants Hudson Rivers just as much as Jamie does and equally views Jamie as competition for Hudson as Jamie does of her.
- Karma Houdini: Angeline gets away with throwing a slab of meatloaf at Miss Bruntford when Jamie takes the blame in an attempt to steal Angeline's permanent record from the principal's office.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- After Jamie spends much of the book picking on Stinker, Stinker eats her English assignment in an act of revenge.
- Mike Pinsetti, who gives embarrassing nicknames to people, eventually gets his own embarrassing nickname when Angeline calls him "Pin-Heady".
- My Hair Came Out Green: Jamie Kelly tries to dye her hair blonde and it comes out the color of raw chicken.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Jamie Kelly returns Angeline's permanent record to the principal's office the day before learning that Angeline has the very spotty permanent record Jamie hoped would be on Angeline's permanent record but figure would be unlikely given Angeline's good nature.
- Trend Aesop: Jamie and the beret. When Jamie finally gets one, the beret fad went away due to the principal's secretaries joining in.
- Trivially Obvious: An illustration of Jamie looking "irresistible" struggles to describe her hair nicely, eventually settling for "some hair".
- Verbal Backspace: An illustration of Jamie looking "irresistible" has an arrow pointing to her hair; on the other end is the words "gorgeous", "beautiful", and "okay" crossed out, followed by "some hair".
