Losing It by Sandy McKay Read Free Book Online Page B

tattooed on her forehead. (And his name is Drumstrings Casey!!) Well, Miss Haddock was talking about tattoos and stuff and Sarah Woodrow starts giggling down the back of the room. So Miss Haddock says what’s so funny and would she like to share it with the rest of us. And guess what? Well, Sarah rolls up her sleeve and shows the whole class this tattoo, which is like a proper tattoo of a heart with someone’s name in it. SAM F.! And it’s real. Sarah Woodrow?!! SAM F.! Can you believe it? Absolutely the last person on earth you would ever imagine with a tattoo! And who the heck is Sam F.?
     
    Luv,
    Issy
     
    P.S. I found this joke book at a sale at Paper Plus in the weekend and I thought it might cheer you up. Read the one on page 13!

Dear Issy,
     
    You?! Working on the school newspaper?! I don’t believe it! Next thing you’ll be signing up for library duty, buying ‘save the whale’ badges and hugging pine trees.
    Hey, thanks for the joke book.
    These are my favourites so far.
    A bloke loses his dog. ‘Put an ad in the paper,’ says a friend.
    So he does. A little classified reading, ‘Here boy!’
     
    How do crazy people go through the forest?
    They take the psycho path.
     
    What do prisoners use to call each other?
    Cell phones.
     
    What lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches?
    A nervous wreck.
     
    Leon put the one about the mental health hotline on the noticeboard:
    If you are obsessive/compulsive, press 1 repeatedly.
    If you have multiple personalities, press 5,6,7 and 8.
    If co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you.
    If you are paranoid, stay on the line so we can trace your call.
    If you are having a nervous breakdown, please fiddle with the # key.
    If you have low self-esteem, please hang up. All of our operators are too busy to bother with you …
    A couple of nurses raised their eyebrows at that. And mean old Morag took it down. Dot says not to take it personally because Morag has absolutely no sense of humour.
    Dot is really cool, Issy. Some of the others don’t talk to you much. One really looks down her nose at us, in fact – but Dot’s great. She treats me like a proper human being and not some screwed-up teenager. And she tells me stuff about her own life as well. She’s probably not supposed to do that but she does and, I know it sounds weird, but it really helps to hear about other people’s problems sometimes.
    You get pretty self-centred in here and you forget about normal people having issues. Like, Dot is on this anti-male rampage after discovering that her husband had been cheating for the past five years. And not only that but most of her friends knew and didn’t bother telling her. Gutted! Dot thinks that even her own daughter might have known about it. She asked me the other day what I’d do if I knew my dad was cheating on my mum. Would I tell? I said I didn’t know. For a start, I couldn’t imagine Dad doing that in the first place but I guess you never know. I don’t think Dot thought it would happen either. What would you do?
    Dot’s favourite joke is on page 156:
    Two women are having lunch together and discussing the merits of cosmetic surgery .
    The first woman says, ‘I need to be honest with you, I’m getting a boob job.’
    The second woman says, ‘Oh, that’s nothing. I’m thinking of having my arsehole bleached.’
    To which the first replies, ‘I just can’t picture your husband blond!’
     
    I felt bad when I read your last letter, Issy. That sounds like a very depressing book to me and it pays not to believe everything you read. My tailbone is not going to come through my skin and I am definitely not going to die. I’m sure they exaggerate these things to sell books. I bet they had something really gruesome and eye-catching on the cover too, didn’t they?
    As I’ve already mentioned – I am the fattest person in the ward by far.
    Hey, guess what. There’s a swimming pool in the next building across. I only just found that out.