The World's Greatest Underachiever and the Killer Chilli

by Henry Winkler

His Statue of Liberty mole was doing jumping jacks now, which it does when he gets excited about his topic. Poor Mr Morimoto. He had no idea what Mr Love was talking about.

  “My brother Lester starts with the cookie part and saves the chocolate-covered marshmallow for last,” Mr Love said. “There’s more than one way to skin a Mallomar, that’s what I always say. There’s more than one way to skin a Mallomar.”

  Mr Love threw his head back and laughed really loudly. Mr Morimoto smiled politely, but I bet he was looking for an emergency exit. If I were him, I would have been.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Yoshi,” he said. “It is your honour to spend the night with one of your fellow students.”

  “Oh no, sir. The honour is mine,” I said. “I am the fellow student.”

  I couldn’t help it. It just shot out of my mouth, and then I smiled from ear to ear. I looked over at Yoshi.

  “We’ll have fun at my house,” I said to him.

  “Ikeru,” he said to me.

  “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  “That’s what we say in Japan. It means ‘that’s cool,’” he said.

  “Ikeru, dude,” I said. “Right back at you.”

  He held up his hand and I high-fived it.

  Mr Morimoto smiled at Yoshi and bowed to me. He turned to leave the room, and old Mr Love was right behind him. I could hear him starting in on why Mallomars were better than Fig Newtons as his Velcro shoes squeaked out the door and chased Mr Morimoto down the corridor.

  Having Yoshi in our class was the most fun I’ve had at school all year.

  When we went to the art room, our teacher Ms Anderson said we were supposed to be drawing a still life of vegetables. Instead, she let Yoshi show us how to draw a really neat superhero from a Japanese comic book. He was a very good artist. As he outlined the character, his tongue curled back and forth along his lower lip. You could tell he was concentrating really hard.

  At break, we played softball. Frankie pitched and Yoshi hit a home run over the Amsterdam Avenue fence. He said he wants to be a professional baseball player when he grows up. Unfortunately, he likes those stinking Yankees, just like Frankie. I’m a Mets fan myself because they are truly the best team in the US of A.

  In music, Mr Rock had brought in some CDs of traditional Japanese string music and we listened to them. I won’t lie to you. I thought they were a little on the screechy side, but Frankie liked them. He said they sounded like the music his mum plays when she’s teaching yoga. Then Yoshi reached into his backpack and pulled out a CD he had brought with him of a new Japanese rap group. We put that on, and Mr Rock even did a little break dancing. I couldn’t understand the words, of course. But the music sounded like the stuff we listen to here.

  At lunch, Yoshi took out some chopsticks he had brought with him and tried to teach us how to use them. Almost everyone was terrible at it. It was Swedish meatball day, and let me tell you, there were lots of Swedish meatballs rolling around our cafeteria floor. Ashley’s grandmother had taught her how to use chopsticks, so she was great at it. She and Yoshi had a chopstick battle to see who could pick up the smallest bit of food without dropping it. When Ashley won, Yoshi bowed to her and she got the giggles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ashley get the giggles like that.

  I was a little worried about our sleepover that night. After all the fun things we had done that day, I wondered how I would come up with anything really interesting to do. Suddenly, hanging out and watching TV seemed kind of dull.

  In the afternoon, Frankie came up with one of his usual brilliant ideas. He made up a game show called “Ask the Yosh Man”, and somehow, he talked Ms Adolf into letting us play it. When Frankie Townsend flashes you the Big Dimple and turns on the charm, even teachers can’t say no.

  Here’s how we played it: Frankie put Yoshi in a chair in front of the class. Then each person got to ask him one question. Yoshi could either tell the truth or make up a fake answer. Then we got to yell TRUE if we thought it was the true answer or FALSE if we thought he was making it up.

  “What’s your favourite sport?” Thomas McAndrews asked him first.

  “Baseball,” Yoshi said.

  “TRUE!” we all shouted.

  “Do you have brothers and sisters?” Kim Paulson asked.

  “I have one sister named Bernice,” Yoshi said, grinning at Frankie.

  “FALSE,” we shouted.

  “Have you ever eaten a raw snail?” Luke Whitman asked.

  “No, but I eat raw octopus,” answered Yoshi.

  “FALSE,” we shouted. But we were wrong on that one. Yoshi told us people in Japan often eat raw octopus. Luke Whitman said if he ate octopus, he’d spit out the suction cups on the tentacles.

  “Have you ever seen a real live sumo wrestler?” asked Ashley.

  “Yes, my uncle is one,” Yoshi said.

  “TRUE,” we all shouted. And it was! How cool is it to have an uncle who’s a sumo wrestler? I thought it was great that my uncle Gary owns a video shop and gives us discounts on DVDs. But Yoshi had an uncle who weighed 432 pounds and wore a nappy!

  “What’s your favourite food?” Ashley asked.

  “Enchiladas,” Yoshi answered.

  “FALSE,” we all shouted, laughing.

  Guess what? We were wrong on that one!

  Imagine our surprise when Yoshi said his absolute most favourite food was cheese enchiladas. He had only had them once when their school had a visitor from Mexico, but he had never forgotten them.

  A light bulb went on in my head. Suddenly, I knew what we were going to do that night. We were going to make a dish for the buffet lunch tomorrow. Chef Hank was going to teach Yoshi Morimoto how to make chilli cheese enchiladas.

  You’re probably wondering if I’d ever made chilli cheese enchiladas before.

  You know what? There’s a first time for everything!

  After school, we were all going to walk back to our apartment building together – Frankie, Emily, Yoshi and me, with Robert tagging along not far behind. Ashley had to go to football practice, so she was going to meet up with us later, after dinner.

  While we waited on the front steps of school for my parents to pick us up, Yoshi showed us a few of his skateboard moves. He was working on perfecting his kick-flip and he actually did one – not once, but twice!

  Emily kept staring at him with that same goo-goo-eyed expression that Ashley had when she first saw him. On a scale of one to ten, I’d say Emily was interested in Yoshi one thousand and fifty-seven.

  “There she goes again,” Frankie whispered to me as he watched Emily staring at Yoshi. “She’s doing that eye thing she does at Robert.”

  “The girl is a goo-goo-eyed machine,” I whispered back. “It’s so embarrassing.”

  Robert kept trying to get Emily to notice him. He was jealous of how much attention she was paying to Yoshi, no doubt about it. Emily and Robert have a special nerd-to-nerd kind of connection. Let’s just say they’ve bonded over their love of the wonderful world of reptiles. So every time Yoshi attempted a kick-flip, Robert would turn to Emily and say something like, “Snakes have no eyelids or ear holes.”

  Poor little guy. No one cared – not even Emily, at that moment.

  I was expecting to see my mum and dad, so I was really surprised when Papa Pete came jogging up 78th Street to our school. He waved to Mr Baker, the lollipop man, and panted to a stop right in front of us. He was breathing pretty hard, although he’s in good shape for an almost sixty-eight-year-old grandpa.

  As soon as Yoshi saw Papa Pete approach us, he hopped off his skateboard, came over to him and bowed. That was a strange sight. My grandpa looks like a big, warm, fuzzy grizzly bear in a strawberry-red tracksuit. He’s definitely not the kind of person you bow to.

  “Hello, grandkids,” Papa Pete said, reaching out to give each of us a pinch on the cheek. I was curious to see if he was going to pinch Yoshi too, but he didn’t. Instead, he bowed back.

  “You must be Yoshi,” he said. “I’m
Papa Pete, Hank’s grandfather.”

  Yoshi bowed again. “It is an honour to meet you, ojiisan.”

  “Hey, Yosh, you can call him Papa Pete,” Frankie said. “We all do.”

  “In Japan, we call older men ojiisan,” Yoshi said. “Out of respect.”

  Papa Pete broke out into a big smile and twirled the end of his long handlebar moustache with his fingers.

  “Right! It’s about time I got a little respect around here,” he said, giving Frankie and me a playful tap on the chin. Then he turned to Yoshi. “How would you like to come with ojiisan on a little ‘Welcome to America’ celebration?” he said. “I have in mind some bowling and a root-beer float.”

  “I have never seen root beer float,” said Yoshi. “I didn’t know it could.”

  We all had a really good laugh, including Papa Pete.

  “We’re going to have a good time, Yoshi, my boy,” he said.

  And then he did just what I knew he was going to do. He reached out and gave Yoshi a big pinch on the cheek. Yoshi seemed surprised, but I think he liked it. There isn’t anybody who doesn’t like Papa Pete. He is the greatest, warmest, funniest, smartest grandpa around.

  We headed down Amsterdam Avenue towards McKelty’s Roll ’N Bowl, which is Papa Pete’s home from home. He’s a champion bowler and a champion root-beer-float drinker too. By the way, in case you recognize the McKelty name, the bowling alley is owned by Nick the Tick’s father. He’s a nice man. No one can understand how that idiot he has for a son got born into his family.

  “Where’re Mum and Dad?” I asked Papa Pete as we dodged our way along the crowded pavement. “I thought they were coming to pick us up.”

  “They’re back at the flat,” Papa Pete answered. “They’re busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Your mother got it into her head that they had to put up new wallpaper in the bathroom,” he answered. “I don’t know why she picked today of all days to do it.”

  I knew, but I didn’t say anything.

  “She thought they’d be finished by now,” Papa Pete went on. “But—” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “There was a little accident involving the iguana and a can of wallpaper paste.”

  Emily, who has all-powerful hearing when you even breathe anything about Katherine, flew into a total panic.

  “What happened to Katherine?” she asked. “Is she hurt?”

  “Katherine is fine,” Papa Pete reassured her. “She stepped in the wallpaper paste and got stuck to the kitchen floor for a few minutes, that’s all.”

  “You mean she was glued to the lino?” Emily yelled.

  “We soaked her feet in water and got her unstuck,” Papa Pete explained. “She’s absolutely as good as new. Except she keeps smelling her toes.”

  Frankie and I burst out laughing.

  “Oh, so you think it’s funny that Kathy was stuck to the floor!” Emily shouted at me.

  “No, Emily.” I could barely answer because I was holding my sides and laughing so hard. “I don’t think it’s funny, I know it’s funny.”

  “Hank, when will you grow up?” she said.

  “In about another eight years,” I howled.

  I was behaving badly and I knew it. But I couldn’t stop. Yoshi was behaving much better than I was. He reached out and patted Emily’s arm.

  “I would like to meet your lizard,” he said to her in a kind voice.

  “You would?” she said. “Oh, Kathy would love that.”

  Emily’s smile was so big, you could almost see her molars. And she had another goo-goo-eye attack too. Boy, that really got to Robert.

  “Actually, Yoshi,” he said, “I don’t recommend that. The iguana can be very moody around new people. I don’t think Kathy would like you.”

  Wow. Robert Upchurch gets grumpy! I guess love will do that to a guy.

  “Robert! Of course Kathy wants to meet Yoshi,” Emily said.

  “How do you know?” I asked. “Did she tell you?”

  “As a matter of fact, she did,” Emily said. “We have a special way of communicating. I know what she’s thinking and she knows what I’m thinking.”

  “Actually, I have developed the knack of iguana communication myself,” Robert said. He had that annoying little bubble thing going on in his throat and he needed to clear it real bad. Poor guy. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

  It didn’t matter, anyway. We had arrived at McKelty’s Roll ’N Bowl and we were already running up the stairs to get our bowling shoes on.

  It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Yoshi was a very good bowler. And you should have seen him on the arcade games. Was there anything this kid couldn’t do? He had magic fingers and killer concentration. I hardly ever play arcade games because my mind always wanders and I’m never able to win.

  After we had bowled, Papa Pete treated us all to root-beer floats. Yoshi thought the float was the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted – next to enchiladas.

  After we had slurped down the last speck of float, Papa Pete let us play one game of air hockey before we had to leave. Yoshi and I were neck and neck, and Frankie was watching, when guess who showed up. I’ll give you a hint – rotten egg bordering on vomit breath.

  You’ve got it. Nick McKelty. He hangs out at the bowling alley a lot because it’s his dad’s place.

  “I got winners,” he said, hunkering down and leaning his rashy elbows on the table.

  “Sorry, McKelty,” I told him. “We have to go after this game.”

  “What’s the big rush?”

  “My grandpa’s going to take us to Gristediano’s.”

  “To the supermarket!” he snorted. “You Zipzers really know how to have a good time. What are you going to do after that? Introduce Yoshi to plastic bags at the dry cleaners? Or maybe get wild and go to Drago’s Shoe Repair for some new heels?”

  Why couldn’t you ever just have a regular conversation with this guy? Why was he always on your case?

  “For your info, dude,” Frankie told him, “we are going to buy supplies to make chilli enchiladas. We’re bringing them for the Multi-Cultural Day Lunch tomorrow.”

  “Oh yeah,” McKelty said. “Wait until you see the pigs in a blanket that I’m bringing. They’ll be a million times better.”

  “Pigs in a blanket?” Frankie said. “You mean those little hot dogs wrapped up in biscuit dough?”

  “Not just regular hot dogs, Townsend,” McKelty said. “These are special hot dogs. My dad got them from—”

  McKelty stopped for a minute. You could just feel his slow brain trying to come up with some outrageous story we were all supposed to believe. Frankie didn’t give him the chance.

  “I know, dude,” Frankie interrupted. “Your dad got them from the King of Hot Dog Land, who he met while sitting in front-row seats at the Knicks game just before he slept over at the White House while teaching the president to bowl.”

  “How’d you know?” McKelty said.

  We just laughed. Yoshi laughed too. I’m sure he didn’t actually understand all the words we were saying, but he got the picture about McKelty. A jerk is a jerk in any language.

  “You’re supposed to bring a dish from another country tomorrow,” Robert said to McKelty. “That’s why they call it the Multi-Cultural Day Lunch.”

  “So what’s your point?” McKelty asked.

  “The point is pigs in a blanket aren’t from another country,” I said.

  “They are too,” said McKelty. “They’re from Kansas.”

  “News flash, Big Dude. Kansas isn’t a country,” Frankie said.

  “I knew that,” McKelty growled. “I just wanted to see if you did.”

  “Right,” Frankie said. “And my name is Bernice.”

  That cracks Yoshi up every time Frankie says it.

  I glanced over at McKelty just to enjoy the look on his face. In that one second, Yoshi shot the puck past me and scored the winning goal.

  “He shoots, he scores,” he said, in abso
lutely perfect English.

  “Where’d you learn that?” I asked him.

  “PlayStation NHL hockey game,” Yoshi answered with a shrug.

  And they say video games aren’t educational.

  Papa Pete says you should never go to the supermarket without a list. While he was saying goodbye to his buddies at the bowling alley, we decided to take his advice. Frankie, Yoshi and I sat down to make a list of what we needed to get at Gristediano’s to make our enchiladas. Robert and Emily refused to participate. When you read the list, you’ll see why.

  I know. You don’t have to tell me. It’s a stupid list. But hey, it was really funny at the time. I guess you had to be there.

  Emily said we were acting like dumb boys. Robert said we were acting like immature boys. But I say this to you: we’re only ten. We’re entitled to lose it once in a while.

  This is the kind of guy Papa Pete is. He took our list and looked it over. He didn’t say one tiny word about how silly or stupid it was. All he said was, “Come on, kids. Let’s get cracking. We’ve got a batch of schmintzaladas to make.”

  Papa Pete is an expert cook. He started The Crunchy Pickle and ran it his whole life until he retired and turned it over to my mum a couple of years ago. Almost everything in that deli is made from his recipes. Potato salad, red cabbage coleslaw, pastrami sandwiches with Russian dressing, tuna melts with tangy cheddar, black bean soup with sour cream. Everything tastes delicious. Except for the stuff my mum makes. She says she’s trying to bring deli food into the twenty-first century, but I think she should have left it back in the twentieth century when Papa Pete was cooking.

  Papa Pete told us he knew what was in enchiladas and I trusted him completely. Anything he cooks turns out great.

  We walked over to Gristediano’s and cruised through the aisles, pushing our trolley. Papa Pete called out the ingredients for the enchiladas and we raced around the aisles to find them. We got tortillas and tomato sauce and cheese and garlic and a can of jalapeño peppers and sour cream. Then Papa Pete took us to the spice aisle.