The World's Greatest Underachiever and the Crazy Classroom Cascade

by Henry Winkler

  I dedicate this book to my wife, Stacey, and

  my three children, Jed, Zoe and Max, because

  it’s their love that gave me the strength to do

  this in the first place – H.W.

  This book is for my four fabulous men –

  Alan, Theo, Oliver and Cole. With love and

  potato leek soup – L.O.

  It started to buzz. I looked up. The loudspeaker above the door crackled and buzzed again. Then it started to shake. It was coming alive!

  “Hank Zipzer!” the loudspeaker said. “Report to Mr Love’s office at once.”

  I put my hands over my ears and slid down in my chair.

  How did it know my name? It was only the first hour of the first day of school, and already my name was coming out of that box on the wall.

  Everyone in class stared at me. Some kids giggled. A few of them whispered. But not Nick McKelty. Nope – he cupped his hands over his big mouth and shouted, “Way to go, Zipper Boy!”

  My teacher, Ms Adolf, shot me a really nasty look.

  Show no fear, I thought. Walk the walk.

  I stood up and strutted to the door like Shaquille O’Neal taking centre court. OK, so I wear a size-four shoe and he wears a size twenty-three – it’s the attitude that matters. I’m big on attitude. Small on shoe but big on attitude.

  When I reached the door, I turned to my best friend, Frankie Townsend. “If I don’t come back,” I told him, “you can have my protractor.”

  “Don’t forget to breathe in there,” Frankie whispered. “Remember, Zip, oxygen is power.”

  Frankie is very big on oxygen. Whenever I’m nervous, he always tells me to take some deep breaths. He learned that from his mum, who is a yoga teacher. She’s really good at yoga. In fact, she’s not good, she’s great. She is so flexible, she can lift up her leg and put her foot in her pocket!

  Even though I was going to the head teacher’s office, I was determined to leave with style, my head held high. I flashed the class my best smile, the one where I show both my top and bottom teeth. Then, in the middle of maybe the greatest exit ever, the loudspeaker buzzed again.

  “And don’t you dare stop in the toilets, young man,” it said.

  Now how did it know I was going to do that?

  Everyone laughed as I left.

  “No laughing in class!” Ms Adolf shouted, banging on her desk with this pointer stick she has.

  That’s one of her rules. Ms Adolf doesn’t believe in laughing. She thinks fourth-graders laugh way too much.

  There are two fourth-grade teachers in my school. One is named Mr Sicilian, and he’s really nice. He plays football with everyone at break time and never gives homework at the weekend. The other is Ms Adolf. She doesn’t play any games and gives two tons of homework even on weekends. My luck, I got Ms Adolf.

  I could practically hear my heart pounding as I walked down the corridor. Mr Love has a way of making you nervous, especially when you don’t know what you’ve done wrong.

  I was trying not to think about him, so I looked at all the “Welcome Back” decorations in the corridor instead. The corridors at my school are painted yuck green. You know, the colour of melted pistachio ice cream. But the decorations really helped to cheer things up. I liked Miss Hart’s door, which had an underwater theme. All the fifth-graders in her class had pasted pictures of their faces on to octopus heads. Mr Sicilian’s was my favourite. All the kids’ heads were footballs. I told you he was cool.

  When I reached the stairs, I thought about sliding down the banister, but I was already in enough trouble, so I took the stairs – two at a time. My mouth was dry when I got to the bottom, so I stopped at the water fountain to have a drink.

  Just as I took the first gulp, the loudspeaker buzzed again.

  “I’m waiting, Mr Zipzer,” it said. Mr Love has the kind of voice that sounds like it belongs to a really tall man with a lot of bushy, black hair. But actually, Mr Love is short and bald except for a little fringe of red hair.

  I ran down the corridor. I couldn’t get into trouble for running in the corridors if the place I was running to was the head teacher’s office, right?

  When I got to the office, I took a deep breath. I looked up at the sign above the door. LELAND LOVE, HEAD TEACHER, it said. I had been here before. Many times. Too many times. Way, way, way too many times.

  Slowly, I pushed open the door. I walked inside and came face to face with the five of them. No, not people – there was only one person there. I’m talking about things. The things on Mr Love’s face: two eyes, two ears and one mole on his cheek that looked like the Statue of Liberty without the torch. I don’t know if it’s possible for a mole to frown, but trust me, this one did not look happy.

  “Approach me, young man,” Head Teacher Love said.

  I wanted to, I really did, but my feet were stuck on his carpet. It was as if I had big wads of chewing gum stuck to the soles of my shoes.

  “Were you or were you not late today?” Head Teacher Love asked.

  I didn’t answer because I’ve found that when Leland Love asks a question, he likes to answer it himself.

  “You were seventeen minutes late,” he said.

  See what I mean?

  “Did we not have this talk thirty times in third grade, fifteen times in second grade, and I won’t even refer to first grade?” Mr Love’s face twitched. It looked like the Statue of Liberty was doing a hula dance.

  I tried not to laugh. That would have got me into even bigger trouble.

  “We’ve had this talk many times,” he answered himself. See, he did it again.

  I looked down at my feet, mostly to stop myself from staring at the Statue of Liberty mole. Once you focus on that thing, it’s really hard to take your eyes off it. I noticed that I had put on odd socks again. One had a Nike swoosh and the other was just your basic Walmart sock.

  “If there’s one thing I want you to learn from your experience at PS 87, it is this—” Mr Love was using his bushy-hair-tall-man voice. “Are you listening, young man?”

  “I’ve got both ears working, sir.”

  Actually, I was listening. I really was curious to hear the single most important thing I was supposed to learn in my whole entire primary school career.

  Head Teacher Love cleared his throat. “Always be on time, when time is involved,” he said.

  Wow. There it was. Now, if I could just figure out what it meant.

  “Explain to me how it is possible that you were late on the very first day of school,” he said.

  OK, I’ll be honest with you. I am late a lot, but I don’t mean to be. In fact, I try really hard to have everything ready on time – my pencils all sharpened; my three ballpoint pens ready to roll; a protractor, a ruler and a compass in my pencil case. But this morning I had a problem. I’m pretty sure I remember putting my rucksack on my desk chair before I went to bed. But somehow, and I don’t have an exact reason for this, my rucksack played hide-and-seek during the night and this morning it took me twenty minutes to find it. It was in the cupboard by the front door. But try telling that to Leland Love.

  “I’m waiting for an answer,” said Head Teacher Love.

  And all that squeaked out of me was, “Can’t explain it, sir.”

  “Well then, absorb this,” he said, “because I’m only going to say it once. Punctuality and the fourth grade go hand in hand.” He paused, then said it again, just like I knew he would. “Punctuality and the fourth grade go hand in hand.”

  I’m not sure but I think the Statue of Liberty on his face nodded i
n agreement.

  I Can’t Believe I’m saying this, but it was actually a relief to get back to Ms Adolf’s class … for about twenty seconds, anyway.

  As soon as I slid into my chair, the words “Five full paragraphs are required” came flying out of Ms Adolf’s mouth like heat-seeking missiles.

  I looked around. All the other kids were writing in their homework books. I reached for my homework book too, but it was missing in action. I thought maybe I had left it in the middle drawer of my desk at home, underneath my broken watch collection. Or maybe on the kitchen table.

  “The topic for your essay is: what I did in the summer holidays,” Ms Adolf went on. As she wrote the words on the blackboard, I noticed that her skirt had lots of chalk marks in the butt region. That happens to teachers when they lean against the blackboard, but I had never seen chalk marks like this before. They looked like donkey ears. When I thought of Ms Adolf with a donkey on her bum, I couldn’t help myself. I laughed out loud.

  “Henry, I see nothing funny,” Ms Adolf said. Of course she didn’t. That’s because she couldn’t see her rear end.

  I bit my lip and tried to concentrate.

  “I expect you to write an opening paragraph, a concluding paragraph and three supporting paragraphs,” Ms Adolf was saying.

  I raised my hand.

  “Exactly how long does a paragraph have to be?” I asked.

  Everyone laughed, which was strange, because I wasn’t trying to be funny. Ms Adolf didn’t laugh. She got little red splotches on her neck, like the kind my sister, Emily, gets when she’s really mad.

  “Well, Henry,” Ms Adolf said, saying my name as if it smelled bad. “We will all learn that from you, since you’ll be the first one to read your essay out loud to the class.”

  Ms Adolf walked to her desk. She wore a cord round her neck with a small key on it. The key was silver and so shiny that she must have polished it every night. She slipped the cord off and unlocked the top drawer of her desk with the key. I wondered what could be in there that had to be locked up. I looked at Frankie, who knew what I was thinking.

  “Maybe she’s got a big wad of cash in there,” he whispered.

  “Or jewels,” said our friend Ashley Wong, who loves jewellery.

  But when Ms Adolf opened the drawer, the only thing she took out was her register. She picked it up and started to write.

  “Henry Zipzer, Monday at nine-fifteen,” she said. “We will all look forward to hearing your essay then. Is that clear, Henry?”

  “Ms Adolf,” I said, “do you think you could call me Hank?”

  “Why would I call you Hank when Henry is a perfectly fine name?” she said. She locked up her register and slipped the key back over her head.

  “It’s what my friends call me.”

  “Well, I am not your friend,” Ms Adolf said. As if I hadn’t already figured that out.

  She reached down and picked a tiny piece of fluff off her skirt. I mean, it was so tiny you needed a microscope to see it. She held the bit of fluff in her hand and walked it carefully over to the bin. When she dropped it in, I’m telling you, I saw nothing leave her fingers.

  I wondered why Ms Adolf would care so much about a piece of fluff. It’s not like she looks that good anyway. All she ever wears are a grey skirt and a grey blouse, which match her grey hair and grey glasses, not to mention her grey face.

  “Remember, class, that’s five paragraphs,” she said. “And neatness counts. I’ll be expecting your very best work. That includes you, Henry.”

  Smile, Hank, I thought. Nod your head, up and down. You can do this. Five paragraphs. What’s the big deal? You’ve got six days.

  Oh come on, who am I kidding? I can’t even write one good sentence. So how am I ever going to write an entire five-paragraph essay? Ms Adolf might as well have asked me to ski down Mount Everest … backwards … blindfolded … and butt naked.

  At lunch, I sat at the table and stared at my vegetarian bologna-sausage sandwich. Most of the other kids were waiting in the hot food queue. It was either macaroni cheese day or tuna-melt day. Or maybe it was both. I couldn’t tell without looking at the menu, because all school food smells the same.

  I looked around the dining room and spotted Frankie. He had just bought some milk and was laughing and talking with Katie Sperling and Kim Paulson, only the two most beautiful girls in the entire school. When Frankie smiles, he gets this huge dimple in his cheek. As he walked, he kept flashing the girls The Big Dimple. And, man, was it working! They were following him to our table. I couldn’t believe it – Katie Sperling and Kim Paulson were going to sit down with us! That is, until Robert Upchurch cut in front of them and took the seat opposite me.

  “Hey, Hank, mind if I sit here?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I answered, but it was too late.

  When Katie and Kim saw Robert, they swerved left – at least I think it was left. Maybe it was right. It’s hard for me to keep track of directions. Anyway, they went down a totally different aisle and sat with Ryan Shimozato and his friends. Robert isn’t exactly a girl magnet. He has a neck the size of a pencil and always wears a starchy white shirt with a tie. (That’s right, I said a tie.) Add to that the fact that he’s the most boring person on the planet and you can’t blame the girls for picking another table.

  Frankie flopped down next to me. “Thanks, Robert,” he said. “Nice work.”

  “What’d I do?” Robert asked. Poor kid, he really didn’t have a clue.

  Robert has just started third grade. Since the third-graders and fourth-graders at my school eat lunch together, this was the first day he’d had a chance to sit with us. We don’t really want him hanging around with us, but he lives in the same block of flats as Frankie, Ashley and me, so he thinks he has the right to tag along everywhere.

  Frankie glanced at my sandwich and made a face. He’s been making faces at my lunches ever since we were in preschool.

  “I see your mum’s at it again,” he said. “What’s she calling this, soy surprise?”

  “It’s bologna,” I told him.

  “Bologna and I go way back,” said Frankie, “and this is no bologna!”

  I don’t know if you’ve had vegetarian bologna before, but I don’t think you’ve ever had my mum’s vegetarian bologna. She thinks she invented it, which proves she should keep her thoughts to herself. My mum’s vegetarian bologna tastes like nothing you’ve ever put in your mouth. Let’s just say it’s round, ground, pinkish leaves of grass. Let’s just say it’s non-food.

  Ever since my mother took over Papa Pete’s deli, she has been experimenting like crazy with food. Unfortunately for me, my lunch is her laboratory. Vegetarian bologna is only one of her experiments. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried her soy salami. Papa Pete says it’s a crime what she does to salami.

  By the way, Papa Pete is my grandpa. He’s the best. Sometimes I get the feeling that he’s the only person who understands me. He never ever thinks I’m stupid or lazy.

  “Actually, bologna is a very interesting word,” Robert said through a mouthful of macaroni cheese.

  Frankie and I looked at each other. You know how when you have a best friend, you and the other person often think the same thing at the same time? We were both thinking, Somebody get me out of this conversation!

  “What’s especially interesting is that bologna contains a silent g, just like the silent k in knock or knight,” Robert went on.

  Robert knows everything. That’s why he skipped second grade. I think it’s great to know a lot of things. I just don’t think you have to say them all the time. Like Robert will name all the James Bond movies in order, including the year they came out, even when no one asks him. And don’t even start him on world capitals. He’ll tell you the capital of Indonesia right in the middle of a dodgeball game. The other day he just looked at me and said, “The human body has enough iron to make one nail.” He said it like it was a totally normal thing to say!

  “Robert,” I said, “w
hy don’t you go and sit with the third-graders.”

  “They’re not interested in what I have to say,” he said.

  “We’re not interested either,” I said.

  “Why not?” he answered. “Spelling is a very challenging subject.”

  “Challenging?” I said. “That’s the understatement of the century. I can’t spell to save my life. And it really bothers me too.”

  “I can’t imagine not being able to spell,” Robert said. “Doesn’t it make you feel stupid?”

  “Robert, will you give Zip a break?” said Frankie, giving him a noogie on the head. “Can’t you see he’s a troubled man?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Robert asked.

  “Ms Adolf is making us write an entire five-paragraph essay,” I answered. “Neatness counts. Punctuation counts. Everything counts. Do you realize how impossible that is?”

  Just then, Ashley slid on to the bench next to me and put her tray down. She had chosen both the macaroni cheese and the tuna-melt. Ashley likes variety – in everything. You should see her clothes. She covers them all with rhinestones – even her trainers. She’s got one pair with a family of dolphins swimming in the ocean, in blue and green rhinestones. She glues them all on herself.

  “What’s impossible?” asked Ashley.

  “Spelling,” I said.

  “Spelling is hard,” she agreed.

  “But this is impossible.”

  She picked up a cherry that was sitting on top of her fruit salad. She popped it into her mouth and ate it. Then her face got all twisted up and busy, like a chipmunk shelling an acorn. In no time, she stuck out her tongue and there was the cherry stem, tied in a perfect knot. Is Ashley Wong an amazing girl or what?

  “Ashweena, that is so cool,” said Frankie. Frankie has a nickname for everyone. He even calls my dad Mr Z. No one else I know even talks to my father.

  “Does nobody care about my problem?” I said. “Is anybody listening?”

  My friends stopped eating and looked at me.

  “How am I going to write five perfect paragraphs by next Monday when I can’t get what I’m thinking about down on paper?” I said. “My handwriting looks like a chicken stepped in tar and ran across the page.”