Help! Somebody Get Me Out of Fourth Grade

by Henry Winkler

  “Filbert Funk was an English man who invented funk music in November of 1974,” I answered without skipping a beat.

  “No, Hank,” said my dad. “Filbert Funk is one of my heroes. He was the younger brother of Isaac K. Funk.”

  “Oh, Isaac,” I said. “He must’ve been the guy who invented funk music in November of 1974.”

  Frankie and Ashley cracked up. Needless to say, my dad didn’t. He was on a Funk Brothers roll, and he didn’t want to be interrupted by a dumb joke.

  “Isaac K. Funk, along with his partner, Adam Wagnalls, published The Standard Dictionary of the English Language in 1894,” my dad explained. “It’s one of everybody’s favorite books.”

  “Except mine,” I said, which was the understatement of the year.

  I can’t stand dictionaries. I can’t sound the word out that I’m looking up, so I can never find it buried in all those dictionary pages. You try looking up a word in the dictionary if you’re dyslexic like I am. The letters flip around on the page, and before you know it, there are letters floating in front of your eyes like synchronized swimmers in the Olympics. Oops, there I go again, getting off on the subject of synchronized swimmers. Sorry. It won’t happen again.

  “Isaac Funk’s younger brother, Filbert, wrote and edited the first Crossword Puzzle Dictionary ever published,” my dad said.

  He looked so happy with that little announcement that I thought his face was going to light up and start to buzz.

  “Wow, Dad,” I said. And because I couldn’t think of anything else to say, I said it again. “Wow.”

  By now, my mom had joined us in the booth. She looked very happy herself. I wondered why both my parents were so pumped up about the Funk Brothers.

  “And here’s the truly exciting part,” my dad said. I think his voice was actually shaking. “Guess where Filbert Funk was born?”

  “Blowing Rock, North Carolina,” I said.

  “No, Hank. Filbert was born in Philadelphia.” My dad broke into a grin the size of the Brooklyn Bridge. “I just happened to read that this morning in Crossword Puzzle Monthly.”

  I wasn’t sure where this conversation was going, but I had a hunch. And I liked my hunch. I liked it a lot.

  “Did you say Philadelphia?” I said. “As in the place where the Stone Cold Rock concert is?”

  “Yes, Hank,” my dad said. “When I mentioned this little-known fact to your mother, do you know what she did? She called and arranged for us to get a private tour of Filbert Funk’s home in Philadelphia. I am going to be able to sit in the very chair where he created the Crossword Puzzle Dictionary.”

  “Your father and I are going to tour the Funk House in the afternoon,” my mom said. “And he said if I go with him, he’ll go with me to the Stone Cold Rock concert in the evening. How’s that for the give-and-take of marriage?”

  She leaned over and planted a big kiss on my dad’s cheek.

  I could feel Frankie and Ashley kicking me under the table. I glanced over at them. Boy, did they look happy. Ashley’s eyebrows were wiggling up and down over her purple glasses, a thing she does when she’s trying to keep a secret. And Frankie had such a big grin on his face that his dimple popped out. It looked like a moon crater.

  “So you guys are going to Philadelphia, after all?” I asked. I had to be sure. “On Cousin Ralphie’s tour?”

  They nodded.

  “Hank, your generosity has allowed me to realize a lifetime dream,” my dad said. “Imagine, my behind in Filbert Funk’s favorite chair. It’s pure joy, Hank. A three-letter word for happiness.”

  “Isn’t this all so wonderful, Hank?” my mom said.

  Oh, she had no idea how wonderful this was.

  CHAPTER 18

  BEFORE WE LEFT THE DELI, Papa Pete gave me a plastic baggie full of pickles to take home. That’s our favorite snack food. Sometimes we go out on the balcony of my apartment and munch on a good, crunchy dill while Papa Pete tells me funny stories about playing stickball when he was a boy growing up in New York. Those are the best times. A pickle and a laugh, you can’t beat that combo. That’s what Papa Pete always says, and I have to agree with him.

  As I unzipped the small compartment of my backpack to put the pickles in, I noticed the pink sign-up sheet wadded up at the bottom. I smiled. I had no use for that anymore. Nope, my parents didn’t need to set up a time to meet with crabby old gray-faced Ms. Adolf. They’d be in Philadelphia on Friday.

  I made up a letter in my head. It was the best head letter I had ever composed.

  Dear PS 87:

  We are sorry to inform you that the parents of Mr. Hank Zipzer will be unable to attend the parent-teacher conference. They have been called out of town unexpectedly. If you need to reach them, you can’t. And that makes me so sad.

  Ta-ta for now, and yours very truly,

  Henry Daniel Zipzer

  P.S. Yippee!!!!!

  CHAPTER 19

  AT NOON ON THURSDAY, a great thing happened. My parents, Stan and Randi Zipzer, went to Philadelphia. They left us a note that said where they were going to be every minute.

  At noon, they were picked up in a limo and driven to Philadelphia. At three o’clock, they’d take the tour of the Funk House. At six o’clock, they’d ride in the limo to the concert. At seven o’clock, they’d be in their front-row seats at the concert. At midnight, they’d be eating Philly cheesesteaks at Pat’s. On Friday morning, they’d be treated to a tour of Philadelphia, and if they wanted, a trip to the tattoo artist. And sometime late Friday, they’d drive back to New York on the fully stocked Stone Cold Rock personal bus.

  They left us their cell phone number where we could reach them in case anything came up. But believe me, I was planning to make sure that nothing came up. I wanted them out of sight, out of touch, and out of PS 87.

  Papa Pete stayed with us that night, which is always so much fun. He lets Emily and me eat Eskimo Pies in our pajamas and play video games until we fall asleep. Well, he lets me play video games. Genius Girl Emily has no interest in video games. She’d rather stay up all night reading old issues of Reptile World. If you promise not to tell anyone, I’ll let you in on a little secret: Sometimes she reads the articles aloud to Katherine, and when she does, it looks as if that leathery lizard is really listening. How weird is that?

  The night went off perfectly. My parents called after the tour of the Funk House, and I have never heard my dad sound happier. He was in crossword-puzzle-dictionary heaven. They called again before the concert, and my mom said they’d try to call afterward.

  They didn’t, but I was glad. It meant they were having a great time. And so was I. I slept like a baby and dreamed about how great it would be to go on to fifth grade. Maybe I’d even get a nice teacher. I had heard that Ms. Warner was cool and let you watch videos on the days before vacations. And Mr. Mooser told funny jokes and didn’t mind if you got a snack from your lunch bag if you were hungry in class.

  In the morning, I woke up and hung around in my pajamas. It was great having no school.

  “Don’t you just love Parent-Teacher Conference Day?” I said to Cheerio when I woke up. He flipped over on his back so I could scratch his stomach.

  “Yeah, boy,” I said with a big yawn. “We have all day to hang out and do whatever we want to do.”

  That’s what I thought, anyway.

  CHAPTER 20

  IT WAS ABOUT TEN O’CLOCK in the morning, and I was sitting in my room, playing a great game of toe basketball. I was beating my own world record of eighteen baskets without leaving my desk chair.

  Toe basketball is a game I invented way back in the second grade. You wad up pieces of lined loose-leaf paper and toss them all over your floor. Then you sit in your desk chair. It’s better if the chair has wheels. You hold onto the bottom of the seat with your hands and scoop up the balls of paper with your toes and fling them into your wastepaper basket, which you can put anywhere you want.

  I was on a hot streak. Or should I say, my toes were.
Twenty-two baskets and only four misses. Sweet!

  Suddenly, I heard this noise coming from out in the hallway. There was yelling, screaming, and banging so loud I thought the roof was caving in.

  I admit it. I was scared. Our building is usually really quiet except when my friends and I are making noise. But the noise we make is regular kid noise—running back and forth to each other’s apartments, using the back stairs, playing ball in the courtyard outside the basement laundry room. Stuff like that.

  This noise didn’t sound like it was being made by kids.

  I jumped up and ran out into the living room. Emily arrived at the same time, with Katherine the Ugly riding on her back as usual. Katherine was hissing and snapping her gray tongue around like it was a whip. Papa Pete was in the kitchen, baking brownies, but he came out holding his wooden spoon to see what all the commotion was.

  We opened the living room door and looked into the elevator hallway. I couldn’t believe my eyes. My jaw dropped so low, it nearly hit the floor.

  It was my parents, none other than Stan and Randi Zipzer. They were standing in the hallway of our apartment—swaying, singing, and tambourining, as if they were still in Philadelphia at the Stone Cold Rock concert.

  My mom was wearing a black T-shirt with the band’s faces on the front and the words “I’m Whacked Out Crazy for You” in hot pink on the back. She had sparkly glitter all mixed up in her hair. But it was my dad who was the most shocking.

  He was wearing black leather pants, and let me just say this right now: They were tight black leather pants. My dad doesn’t spend a lot of time at the gym, so those pants were tight in places where pants aren’t supposed to be tight—especially the tummy area. He was wearing a black leather hat that made him look like a cross between Britney Spears and the leader of a tough motorcycle gang. And he was singing at the top of his lungs, banging a tambourine on his hip.

  “Dad, where did you get those pants?” I said without losing a second.

  “From Skeeter,” he answered, then slapped the tambourine hard on his other hip.

  The door to Mrs. Fink’s apartment flew open, and she stuck her head out. At first she looked scared, but when she saw it was just my parents, she stepped into the hall and started dancing with my dad. She was wearing her big pink bathrobe, and I guess she hadn’t put her false teeth in yet, because when she smiled, she was all gums and no teeth. My dad twirled her around a few times. She looked like a big, pink polar bear I saw in a Disney cartoon once.

  “Oh, did you kids have fun?” she asked my dad.

  Of course we couldn’t hear her over the tambourine banging, but I could read her lips through the open door. My dad didn’t answer, he just grabbed onto her robe and spun her around again. She laughed, and I noticed that her gums matched her robe. I wonder if she planned it that way.

  “We’re home, kids,” my dad shouted when the song ended.

  No kidding. We would have never known unless you told us.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Hank,” my father kept saying over and over again.

  “Kids, you would not believe your father,” my mom said as she almost skipped into our apartment. “At one point, the crowd picked him up and passed him around the audience . . . your dad!”

  “But, Dad . . . I thought you didn’t like rock music,” Emily said.

  “It’s different when you see it live,” my dad said, wiping some sweat off his forehead and arms. I guess those leather pants don’t let a lot of cool air in. “I’m so glad you all convinced me to go. I really got my groove on.”

  He got his what on? Did he say “groove”? Please tell me he didn’t say that.

  “And the band could not have been nicer on the bus ride home,” my mom said. “Turns out Skeeter, the drummer, is a crossword-puzzle whiz. And Stan the Man here challenged Skeeter—we call him Skeet—to a New York Times Triple Crossword contest.”

  “Who won?” Emily asked.

  “It was a tie,” my father answered as he rattled his new tambourine above his head and slammed it into his right hip again. “But I’m down with that!”

  “Dad,” I said, trying to clear my ears to make sure I was hearing correctly. “Did you just say you’re down with that?”

  “No, Hank,” he answered, drumming out a beat on the coffee table. “I said I’m down wid dat. Skeet says you don’t pronounce the th. I’m down wid dat.”

  “This is the same Skeet whose pants you’re wearing?”

  “That’s right,” my dad said. “We were on the bus coming home, and I leaned over to help Skeet with a clue. I think it was thirty-nine down. Or maybe it was forty-two across. Unless it was six down. That was a tricky one.”

  “Dad, the pants? Remember?”

  “Oh, right. Well, when I leaned over to help Skeet, wouldn’t you know, I ripped my trousers right up the middle.”

  “It was so funny, we all cracked up,” my mom said, cracking up again.

  “So Skeet says to me, take my extra pants. And I did. They look pretty darn cool, don’t they, son?”

  Oh, boy. I have fallen into a dream that my dad has become a rock ’n’ roll freak, and I can’t wake up. Someone hit the snooze button on my clock radio!

  My dad strutted over to Papa Pete and danced in a circle around him, shaking his butt as much as the tight leather pants would allow him. Papa Pete laughed and shook his butt right back at him. You can’t out butt-shake Papa Pete.

  “Hey, Papa Pete,” my dad laughed. “Let me see you shake that thang.”

  Let me point out that he didn’t say thing. He said THANG.

  My father, Stanley L. Zipzer—computer buff, mechanical-pencil collector, crossword-puzzle nut—just said, “shake that thang.”

  Grabbing my mom, he launched into a chorus of another Stone Cold Rock song, “Rockin’ All Night in the Meadow with You,” pounding the tambourine on his hip in time to the wild beat.

  “Ow, that hurts,” he said, rubbing his hip when he had finished the song. “I have to find a new part of my body to play this with.”

  Well, that did it. Emily and Papa Pete burst out laughing. And I did too.

  “Hey, next time, use your butt,” I offered.

  We all laughed. I think I even saw Katherine’s scaly lip pull back into a smile. I never knew my dad could be so much fun.

  “Well,” my mom said, “I hate to break up the party, but we have to hurry off now. We’ll see you kids later.”

  “Where are you going?” I asked, the smile still on my face from watching my dad’s performance.

  “To school, of course,” my mom said. “It’s Parent-Teacher Conference Day. We have a one o’clock meeting with Ms. Adolf.”

  Did I just say I had a smile on my face?

  Correction.

  Suddenly, there was no smile on my face. It had disappeared faster than you could say, “Redo.”

  CHAPTER 21

  MY MOUTH WENT DRY, and my knees started to shake.

  “But, Mom,” I said, “how did you know it was Parent-Teacher Conference Day?”

  My mind raced. Maybe she had found the brown envelope that I had left stuffed in the bottom of my backpack under all the half-eaten granola bars. Maybe Frankie’s mom had reminded her of the teacher conferences while they were doing the Downward Facing Dog or one of their other crazy positions in yoga class. Or maybe Ms. Adolf had implanted a communication device in my mom’s head during Back to School Night and was sending secret messages to her. That had to be it.

  “Ms. Adolf called to set up an appointment,” my mom said.

  What, no implant device? What was wrong with me? Why hadn’t I thought of the telephone?

  “Apparently, there was a pink sign-up slip that a certain someone was supposed to bring home,” my mom said, ruffling my hair with her hand. “And when you didn’t return yours, Ms. Adolf called us directly.”

  My face must have turned all colors of red, green, and blue, because my mom reached out and gave me a little kiss on the cheek.


  “Don’t worry about it, honey. I know how things slip your mind.”

  “But I thought you’d be gone . . .”

  “We wouldn’t miss your teacher conference, Hank,” my dad said. “Not even for Filbert Funk.”

  “Or Stone Cold Rock,” my mom added.

  “Your education is very important to us,” my dad added. Uh-oh. He was starting to sound like himself again.

  “But what about the band . . . and the fully stocked bus and everything?” was all I could manage to say.

  “Oh, when we told Skeet and the boys that we had an appointment with your teacher, they didn’t mind coming back to New York early,” my mom said. “They said they were down with that.”

  Oh, no. Now she was doing it, too!

  “Ms. Adolf mentioned that we should bring a large brown envelope she sent home with you,” my mom said. “I assume that’s stuffed in your backpack with all the other papers you always forget.”

  The room was starting to spin. All my plans, going down the drain in front of my eyes. Before I could move, my mom was unzipping the large compartment of my backpack and pulling out the hideous brown envelope.

  I hate you, brown envelope!

  “Come on, Stanley. We’d better hurry.”

  “Wait!” I said, desperate to stop them. “You can’t go!”

  “Why not, honey?”

  “Because . . . because . . . well, look at Dad. He’s wearing leather pants.”

  “So? I think they look kind of cute on him.”

  Cute? Maybe she temporarily lost the sight in both eyes.

  “So . . . um . . . my teacher will think you’re a rock star, Dad, and then all the other teachers will swarm around you to get your autograph, and, well, you know how you feel about crowds and all.”

  I looked over at Emily for help. She actually looked like she felt sorry for me.

  My mom picked up her purse and headed for the door. “We’re looking forward to talking to your teacher, Hank. I’m sure she’ll have many lovely things to say about you.”