The World's Greatest Underachiever and the Crazy Classroom Cascade

by Henry Winkler

  “If a chicken stepped in tar, it would get stuck and couldn’t run anywhere,” Robert pointed out.

  “Shut up, Robert,” we all said together.

  “I put commas in the wrong places,” I continued. “My capital letters look weird. My lowercase letters look even weirder. My spelling – well, we all know about my spelling.”

  “Take a breath, Zip,” said Frankie. “We’ll figure it out. Hey, make friends with the dictionary. Let your fingers do the walking, if you know what I’m talking about.”

  Frankie is really good at school. He thinks maths is easy and get this – he reads for fun. I wish I could do that. I wish it was easier for me to read a book.

  “You sound just like my father,” I said. “He’s always telling me to look up words in the dictionary.”

  Suddenly, Frankie grabbed his chest and fell to the ground, flopping around like he was some kind of alien. He’s cool enough to be able to do a thing like that in the dining room. Even Katie Sperling and Kim Paulson were laughing. Not at him, either, but with him.

  “That hurts!” he screamed. “Comparing me to Silent Stan, the crossword-puzzle man.” (That’s another one of Frankie’s nicknames for my dad.) Frankie got up and sat back down at the table. “Someone, please. What’s a four-letter word for a root vegetable?” he said, doing a perfect imitation of my father working on a crossword puzzle.

  We all cracked up. Milk came shooting out of Ashley’s nose. It splattered all over her T-shirt, spraying the rhinestone self-portrait she had done. Drops of milk hung off the purple stones she had used for the frames of her glasses.

  “Does anyone have a napkin?” she asked.

  “Here, take mine,” I told her. “My sandwich is never going to make it to my mouth anyway.”

  “Do me a favour, Zip,” Frankie said. “Don’t ever tell me that I sound like your father again.”

  “Then don’t bring up the dictionary again,” I said. “It’s such a useless invention. At least for me.”

  “Don’t tell that to Ms Adolf,” said Ashley. “She’s in love with dictionaries.”

  “They don’t make any sense,” I said. “I can’t spell words because I can’t sound them out. So how am I going to find them in a dictionary if I can’t spell them in the first place? Do you know my dictionary has one thousand two hundred and fifty-six pages? Words get lost in there.”

  “Zip, you’re forgetting to…”

  “… breathe. I know, Frankie. I am breathing.”

  Frankie put his hand on my shoulder. “Look, it’s just an essay, my man.”

  “Maybe for you,” I said. “For me, it’s torture.”

  Frankie reached into his lunchbox and pulled out a packet of Ding Dongs. He took one for himself and gave one to me.

  “Listen up, Zip,” he said. “We’re supposed to write about what we did in our summer holidays, right? So just write about what happened to you. You had an awesome summer holiday – going to Canada and to Niagara Falls and getting to steer the boat all by yourself when the captain fell overboard. Man, that’s cool stuff.”

  Ashley nearly choked on her second cherry stem.

  “That’s not what you told me,” she said. “You told me your sister got seasick and threw up all over your plastic raincoat.”

  OK, OK, so sometimes I tell stories. But they’re not lies or anything. It’s just that I think the world needs to be entertained. I happen to be good at it. Like Papa Pete says, “If you got it, flaunt it.” Flaunt. There’s another word I can’t spell.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere came a hand bigger than an average hand. Bigger than a tabletop. Then a head the size of Rhode Island appeared. Next came the smell of bad, bad breath – the kind that makes the gel in your hair lose its grip.

  “That Ding Dong is mine,” Nick McKelty said as he smashed what was once my chocolate bar into his oversized mouth. “I wuffofv deese.”

  Robert dived for cover under the table. Ashley shot milk again.

  “Be my guest,” I said. It was either that or have Nick the Tick pound my skull with his knuckles. Nick thinks that because he is the biggest guy in the fourth grade, everybody’s lunch is his personal meal. We are his menu and he just takes whatever he wants.

  Nick was looking for his second course. My instincts told me he was headed for Ashley’s tuna-melt.

  “Nick!” I said, yelling to catch his attention. “You don’t want to eat that.”

  “Like you’re going to stop me,” he said, flashing me his stupid grin. The Ding Dong chocolate was wedged in the gap between his teeth so it looked like he had three front teeth.

  “Did you hear about the tuna they just caught off Cape Cod that ate a licence plate from a car from Ohio?” I said to him, thinking fast. “There was so much metal ground up inside him that by the time he got to the shop he didn’t need a tin.”

  I pointed to Ashley’s sandwich. “That’s him in there.”

  You could almost hear the small wheels grinding inside his huge blond head.

  “I didn’t want that pathetic sandwich anyway,” he said. “I’ve got to save my appetite for the Knicks’ basketball game tonight. My dad’s got tickets for right next to the players’ bench.”

  Nick’s father owns the local bowling alley, McKelty’s Roll ’N Bowl. Maybe that’s why Nick the Tick thinks he has the right to act like a big shot all the time. All he does is brag, and none of it is ever true.

  OK, like I said before, I tell stories sometimes too. But let’s get one thing straight: my stories are purely for entertainment purposes. Nick’s stories are to make him seem cool. Which he’s not, I might add. Like, he says his father has the best seats for every sporting event in the United States of America. The truth is, they mostly watch the games on the TV at the bowling alley. That’s what we call The McKelty Factor. Truth times a hundred.

  In any case, Nick walked away. Ashley smiled at me. “Thanks, Hank,” she said.

  I felt proud. I had saved her lunch.

  “You are amazing, Zip,” Frankie said. “You have so much trouble with so many things, but never with your mouth. It’s a brilliant mouth.”

  I thought about that. If my brilliant mouth worked on Nick McKelty, why couldn’t it work on Ms Adolf?

  I took out a piece of paper and a pencil. I had a plan.

  Before lunch ended, I decided to find Ms Adolf and have a little chat. She was sitting at her desk, finishing her lunch. Two big napkins covered most of her. Just her shoes were showing. They were grey. She was eating a banana that was so brown you couldn’t even tell it had ever been yellow.

  “May I talk to you for a minute, Ms Adolf?” I asked from the doorway.

  She waved me inside.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about my essay,” I began.

  “I’m glad to hear that, Henry,” she said.

  “What I’ve been thinking about, exactly, is that it would really benefit you if I don’t write this essay.”

  “Is that so?” she said. She tossed the banana skin into the bin.

  “In fact, I’ve spent a good part of my lunch break writing a list of ten really excellent reasons why I shouldn’t write this essay.”

  I pulled the piece of paper from my back pocket and flattened it out on her desk with the palm of my hand. There was a big, greasy smudge on it. And it really, really smelled like tuna fish. I have to admit it was pretty disgusting.

  “Sorry,” I said, trying to rub it off. “It was tuna-melt day. Just pretend it’s a scratch-and-sniff.”

  I smiled. Ms Adolf didn’t.

  That wasn’t a good start, but I had to think positively. I stood very quietly while she read the list.

  TEN REASONS WHY HANK ZIPZER SHOULD NOT WRITE A FIVE-PARAGRAPH ESSAY ON “WHAT I DID THIS SUMMER”

  1. Every pen I own runs out of ink.

  2. My thoughts are controlled by alien beings who make me write in a strange language.

  3. We couldn’t go anywhere over the summer because my dog had a nervous breakdown.
<
br />   4. I’m highly allergic to lined paper.

  5. When I write, my fingers stick together.

  6. If I sit too long, my bum falls asleep and snores, which keeps my sister awake.

  7. Every time I write an essay, my dog Cheerio eats it for breakfast before I can get to school. So why try?

  8. My computer keyboard is missing eleven letters – v, c, t, s, m and all the vowels including y and w.

  9.

  10.

  The last two reasons were on the tip of my tongue, but I just couldn’t get them to the tip of my pencil.

  Ms Adolf put down the list and looked up at me. “This is very creative,” she said.

  Creative. Creative is good. My plan was working.

  “I hope you’ll use some of this creativity in your essay,” she went on. “I look forward to hearing you read your written words on Monday morning.”

  Then she took my list, crumpled it up and tossed it in the bin. There is my creativity, I thought – stuck to the top of a brown banana skin.

  Three, two, one. Brrriinnngg. The bell. After an endless afternoon of alphabetizing practice, the first day of fourth grade was finally over. Frankie and I looked at each other. We were free men.

  Frankie, Ashley and I ran downstairs and practically flew out the front door of the school building. Papa Pete was waiting outside to walk us home. He was helping Mr Baker, the lollipop man, take the little kids across the road. Papa Pete is my mother’s father. He also happens to be one of the greatest human beings on the face of the earth.

  “There he is,” said Frankie, waving to Papa Pete. “Get your cheeks ready.”

  When Papa Pete sees you, he gives you a big pinch and says, “I love this cheek and everything that’s attached to it.” I know this sounds like it’s annoying, but actually it makes you feel really good.

  Papa Pete gave us each a pinch and a hug. “I hardly recognized you kids,” he said. “You look so much older now that you’re in the fourth grade.”

  We had hoped that this would be the year we’d be allowed to walk home from school by ourselves. After all, Frankie, Ashley and I lived in the same block of flats, so we could all walk together. Safety in numbers, we all told our parents. But we were all turned down flat. New York City is not a place for kids to be wandering around alone, our parents said.

  OK, we could live with that, because having Papa Pete walk you home is actually pretty fun. He walks a few metres behind us to make it look like we’re walking alone. Papa Pete is so big that there is no way we could lose him in a crowd, even if we tried. It’s not that he’s tall, he’s just large, the way a grizzly bear is large. My Grandma Jennie used to call him her big, cuddly grizzly bear. Maybe that was because he also has a ton of curly black hair on his arms and a huge moustache he calls his handlebars. After he eats something messy, he’ll always say, “Tell me, Hank. Do I have anything hanging off the old handlebars?” I always tell him if he does, because he doesn’t want to be embarrassed.

  We headed up Amsterdam Avenue. We walked a couple of blocks and passed Harvey’s, our favourite pizza place. It’s no wider than a corridor, but they have the greatest Cherry Cokes and pizza there. You can smell it blocks away.

  “I say we stop in for a slice,” Frankie said.

  Papa Pete shook his head. “Hold on, partner. We’ve got bigger bread to butter.”

  When Papa Pete says a thing like that, you don’t argue. He’s always got something great waiting for you.

  We passed the man on the corner selling sunglasses. “Hey, gentlemen and lady,” he said to us. “I’ve got a special pair just for your face.”

  Ashley stopped to look at a pair of rhinestone-covered glasses, but Frankie and I pulled her away. You can’t let Ashley get started on rhinestones or you’ll be there all day. She’s a complete rhinestone nut.

  Messengers on motorbikes whizzed by us. Mums coming back from the park pushed their babies in buggies. I love to see the babies’ feet hanging out of the buggies. It always amazes me that inside their little bitty feet are big feet waiting to pop out and play baseball.

  A couple of blocks up, we passed my mum’s deli, the one Papa Pete started. It’s called The Crunchy Pickle. They serve sandwiches so high they have to be held together with a toothpick. I waved at Carlos, who works behind the counter. I could see him shouting something, and even though I couldn’t hear him, I knew he was saying, “Hey, Little Man.”

  “Hey, Big Man,” I called back.

  When we got to our block of flats, Frankie and Ashley started to go inside. Papa Pete steered them back on to the pavement.

  “You haven’t forgotten, have you?” he said. “We have some business to conduct. I was thinking maybe you could come to my office.”

  Papa Pete’s “office” is McKelty’s Roll ’N Bowl. It’s his hangout, his home from home. Everyone there knows him. He’s the best senior bowler on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

  “I’ll have to ask my parents,” Ashley said.

  “I took the liberty of phoning the good Doctors Wong,” said Papa Pete, “and they said you don’t have to be home until six.” Although Ashley’s parents are both doctors, Papa Pete is the only one I know who calls them “the good Doctors Wong”. They don’t seem to mind, though.

  “I don’t think my mum will let me go,” Frankie said. “My dad teaches tonight and she likes me home.”

  Frankie’s dad teaches African-American studies at Columbia University, which is thirty-eight blocks uptown. Once, his dad let me go to one of his lectures. He talked for almost two hours. I don’t think I’ll ever go to university if you have to sit still and listen to someone talk for two hours – and take notes at the same time.

  “Fortunately for you, your mother was standing on her head when I called,” Papa Pete said to Frankie, “so I spoke to your father. When I explained that we were discussing important business, he said OK.”

  That was all we needed to hear. We took off for McKelty’s, which is only a couple of blocks from our building. It’s located on the second floor above the ninety-nine-cent shop, where I do most of my present buying. I bought my mum some earrings there for Mother’s Day. She doesn’t wear them much, though, because they hurt her lobes. Lots of people who shop at the ninety-nine-cent shop don’t even realize that there’s a bowling alley upstairs. You can hardly see it from the street, but it’s got fifteen lanes, video games and a coffee shop, too.

  When we got to McKelty’s, the lanes were full of Papa Pete’s friends. They were all wearing their different coloured team shirts. They waved at us as we took a seat in one of the red plastic booths in the coffee shop.

  “Fern!” Papa Pete called out. “Three root-beer floats for my grandkids here.”

  The fact that Frankie is African-American and Ashley’s parents are from Taiwan doesn’t stop Papa Pete from calling them his grandkids. That’s another thing I love about him. And another is that he’ll always buy you as many root beer floats as you want without ever mentioning that they will spoil your appetite for dinner.

  Fern, who has been working at McKelty’s for like a hundred and fifty years, brought us our root-beer floats.

  As we were slurping down the last of our ice cream, Papa Pete started talking. “OK, let’s get down to business,” he said, wiping some whipped cream from his moustache. “I believe you’ve got a little something to show me.”

  I haven’t mentioned this before, because sometimes I forget things, but Frankie is an outrageous magician. He doesn’t just do the tricks you can buy in the shops, either. He makes up his own. Anybody can make a nickel disappear and then pull it out of your ear. But Frankie can make a quarter disappear and then have five nickels drop out of his nose. Now that’s what I call magic.

  Papa Pete was thinking of hiring him to be the entertainment at his Bowling League’s Start of the Season Party. His team is called The Chopped Livers. Everything about Papa Pete has to do with the deli he used to own – like his two parakeets are named Lox and Bagels. I�
��m surprised he didn’t name my mother Pickled Herring.

  “Let’s see what you can do,” Papa Pete said to Frankie.

  “You mean you’re making the kid audition?” Fern said.

  “Business is business,” answered Papa Pete, winking at Ashley and pinching my cheek, all at the same time.

  Frankie reached into his rucksack, got out three red cups and placed them in a row on the table.

  “What you see before you are three ordinary red cups,” he began. He took out two small- and one medium-sized royal blue sponge balls that he mushed together into the palm of his hand. He asked Ashley to blow on his closed hand three times, then opened his palm and the balls had transformed into one big blue sponge ball. He put that ball under the middle red cup. He moved all the cups around in a flurry, then put them in a stack.

  “Zengawii!” chanted Frankie. It’s a word he made up when he went to Zimbabwe with his parents a couple of years ago. Frankie says it has magical powers.

  He lifted the stack of cups high in the air. There on the table were two small- and one medium-sized sponge balls.

  “You’re hired,” Papa Pete said, applauding. “Do you want the job?”

  “Could I have a word with my associates for a moment?” I asked Papa Pete. “In private.”

  I pulled Frankie and Ashley off to the side.

  “I see a future here for us all,” I said. “Frankie, you’re the head magician, but you’re going to need an assistant, which is me. And we’ll need a business manager. That’s you, Ashley. You’ll make us millionaires.”

  “I want to be an assistant, too,” Ashley said.

  “OK,” I said. “We’ll take turns. But you still have to be the money person, because I’m dangerous with numbers.” Last week, I went to buy a slice of pizza and they were out of dollar bills, so the guy gave me change all in coins. I just had to trust that he had given me the right change, because there was no way I could add it all up in my head. I would have needed a pad of paper, a pencil and my sister, Emily, who is like a human calculator, to figure it out.