The World's Greatest Underachiever Is the Ping-Pong Wizard

by Henry Winkler

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Master Zipzer and I deeply appreciate the fabulous “Penguinettes” for helping to introduce us to millions of readers: Bonnie Bader, Mariann Donato, Jess Michaels, Shane Breaux, Katrina Weidknecht, Gina Maolucci, Angela Jones, Lucy Del Priore and Lara Phan. And always, to Stacey – H.W.

  For Theo, my beloved first son and wizard of many fine arts, including Ping-Pong – L.O.

  “This is it, Zip,” my best friend Frankie Townsend said as we slid into our seats in Room 31, our new classroom on the third floor. “The first day of fifth grade. Let’s kick it off with a bang.”

  No sooner were those words out of his mouth than we heard a huge BANG in our classroom!

  Correction. It wasn’t exactly a bang. It was a screeching buzz followed by a loud crackle topped off with a high-pitched squeak that sent goose bumps down to the backs of my knees.

  I looked around the classroom to see where the knee-bumping noise was coming from. It took me a second to realize that it was the loudspeaker above the door, screeching like it had just got a humongous booster shot from the doctor. I had to do something about that sound.

  Quickly, I tore off the corner of a sheet of paper from my new spiral notebook, popped the paper into my mouth, and rolled it into a ball with my tongue. Then I blew with all my might and shot that spitball right into the centre of the loudspeaker.

  Bull’s-eye! Hank Zipzer, you and your mouth have one great aim.

  “Nice shot, dude,” Luke Whitman cheered, putting up his hand to slap me a high five. As my hand made contact with his, I noticed that his palm was crusted with a lot of brown gooky stuff, but I high-fived him anyway.

  “Check out your hang time,” Frankie said, pointing at my spitball, which was still clinging to the centre of the loudspeaker.

  I don’t mean to brag about my saliva, but that spitball hung on for a good ten seconds before it dropped to the floor. When it did, Luke Whitman held up his hand to slap me another high five. This time, I hesitated because of the already mentioned crusty palm situation.

  “Don’t worry, it’s just oatmeal,” Luke said. “The snail slime makes it hard to get off.”

  If you knew Luke, you’d understand. He likes bugs and snails. And he doesn’t like to wash his hands. Enough said.

  “Both of you boys are completely and totally disgusting,” said Joelle Adwin, who had just sat down in the desk across the aisle from me.

  Oh no, I have Joelle Adwin in my class!

  Joelle is the expert in completely and totally disgusting boys, since her boyfriend is the king of them all. She has the honour of being the girlfriend of the completely and totally disgusting Nick “The Tick” McKelty, who wears his already-been-chewed breakfast in between his two front teeth and snorts like a hippo when he laughs.

  Just then, McKelty walked into the classroom.

  Double oh-no with a cherry on top! McKelty’s in my class too. Is this bad luck or what?

  Nick took his seat across from Joelle and turned to me to see what trouble he could cause. This morning he was wearing raisin toast and, I think, raspberry jam between his teeth.

  “You suck, Zipzer,” he said. That’s McKelty’s special way of saying hello to me.

  I turned my back on him, which is my special way of saying hello to him. My other best friend, Ashley Wong, had just taken the seat next to Frankie. At least my two best friends were in my class again this year.

  “I hate to say this, Hank, but Joelle does have a point,” Ashley whispered. She pointed at the spitball lying on the floor under the loudspeaker. “You should pick it up.”

  I slipped out of my chair, crawled over to where the spitball was still lying on the floor and scooped it up. Suddenly, the loudspeaker started to crackle again, only this time, the crackling turned into a voice.

  “This is your head teacher, Leland Love, speaking,” blared the loudspeaker. “Welcome to a new school year at PS 87.”

  Still crouching, I tossed the spitball over to the bin next to the teacher’s desk. Oops, it missed and landed on the floor.

  “Students in Room 31 should take their seats – and that goes especially for you, Hank Zipzer,” Head Teacher Love said.

  How did he know I was out of my seat? Does the loudspeaker have eyes?

  “Any pupils acting up or shooting spitballs will have to report directly to my office. Did you hear me, Hank Zipzer?”

  Spitballs! How did he know I was shooting spitballs? Maybe his eyes had come out of their sockets, jumped from his head and rolled up and down the hall to spy on kids.

  I hadn’t heard Head Teacher Love’s voice in almost a month, since summer school ended. I’d like to say I’ve missed hearing it. But it wouldn’t be true. Not even a little teeny bit.

  “Students in Room 31, I have received a message from your teacher,” Mr Love went on. “She has telephoned to say she will be a few minutes late due to a detained bus on Broadway. You are to stay in your seats until she arrives. And that goes especially for you—”

  The whole class joined in with the loudspeaker to finish the sentence. “Hank Zipzer,” they chanted in unison.

  The leader of this chant was Ramon Perez. I’d never even been in a class with him before. How did he know that I always get into trouble? Well, to be fair to Ramon, I guess I do have a reputation for getting into trouble with the head teacher. I try very hard not to break the rules, but sometimes I just can’t stop myself from bending them really hard.

  There was another blast of that screeching sound, then the loudspeaker clicked off. Everybody started to talk at once. We were dying to know who our new teacher was going to be.

  “I heard she’s beautiful,” Ryan Shimozato said.

  “Like a beauty queen or something?” asked Matthew “I’m not too bright” Barbarosa. Hey, where is his best friend, Salvatore Mendez? He must have been put in the other fifth-grade room. Man, I’d hate to be separated from Frankie and Ashley.

  “I’ll bet she was Miss Alabama,” Nick McKelty said in his big, loud voice.

  “Why Alabama?” Frankie asked him.

  “It’s the only state I could think of,” McKelty said, and shrugged. Everyone burst out laughing, and his face turned bright red.

  “What’s so funny?” he shouted. “I know all the other forty states. I just don’t feel like saying them now.”

  Joelle reached over and patted McKelty’s arm.

  “There are fifty states, Nicky,” I could hear her whisper.

  “I knew that,” he snapped back at her. “I wanted to see if you did.”

  McKelty can never admit when he’s wrong, which, by the way, he is most of the time. I don’t know why anyone, even Joelle Adwin, who loves her mobile phone so much that she wants to marry it, would want to be his girlfriend.

  “I just hope the new teacher is nice,” Ashley said, adjusting her baseball cap, which she had decorated with red rhinestones that said FIFTH GRADE RO
CKS! on the bill.

  “You said it, Ashweena.” Frankie nodded. “Not like a certain Ms Adolf.”

  Ms Adolf was our fourth-grade teacher and she specialized in the No-Fun, No-Laughing, Sit-Still, Give-Lots-of-Homework kind of teaching. She wore all-grey clothes every single day, to match her grey hair and grey glasses and grey face.

  Just that morning, Frankie and Ashley and I had been talking on the way to school about how glad we were to be in the fifth grade and leave Ms Adolf to the fourth-graders. My sister, Emily the Perfect, and her boyfriend, Robert Upchurch the Know-It-All, were in the fourth grade this year. I wondered if they were sitting in Ms Adolf’s class right that very minute.

  Oh yeah, that thought makes me smile.

  “Footsteps!” a new kid named Marcus called out.

  “Here she comes,” everyone whispered.

  We all sat up straight at our desks and looked towards the door. The footsteps got louder and louder as they got closer and closer. I could feel my heart beating a little faster. That may sound silly, but I couldn’t wait to see who my teacher was. It was a big moment. When you think about it, you spend more time with your teacher than you do with your mum and dad. I mean, six hours a day, five days a week, that makes… Let me see now… Oh forget it, I’m terrible at maths.

  I looked towards the door and could see the new teacher through the frosty glass window. I couldn’t see a face, just an outline.

  No one said a word as the doorknob turned. Slowly, slowly, the door opened. There she was.

  “Hello, pupils,” she said. “I’m your fifth-grade teacher!”

  It was Ms Adolf!

  No, I’m not kidding. I wish I was.

  But I’m not.

  Ten Things Any Normal Kid Would Say When He Finds Out He Has Ms Adolf Again

  1. I’m dead.

  2. I’m dead meat.

  3. I’m dead rat meat.

  4. I’m double-dead rat meat.

  5. I’m double-dead rat meat with only one claw.

  6. Wait a minute. Let me rub my eyes and check again, because maybe what I’m seeing isn’t real.

  7. Nope, it’s her. Ms Adolf in the flesh.

  8. You can handle this, Hank. It’s only a year.

  9. That’s 365 days.

  10. Let me get out my calculator. That is 8,760 hours. 525,600 minutes. 31,536,000 seconds.

  11. I’m going to spend the next 31 million seconds with Ms Adolf.

  12. Oh yeah. I’m rat meat times 31 million.

  13.* Stick a fork in me. I’m done.

  *I know, I know. This is more than ten things. But give me a break, will you? If you just found out that you had Ms Adolf again, you wouldn’t be able to count either.

  Ms Adolf marched straight to her desk and unlocked the top drawer with a key she wears on a cord round her neck. She reached in the drawer, pulled out a navy blue register and began calling our names. As each student said “here”, she made what she thought was a welcoming comment.

  Let me just say this: her comments weren’t exactly welcoming. She could have said, “Hey, great to see you, kids. Did you have a terrific summer?”

  Nope. That’s not the Ms Adolf we know and don’t love. Here’s what she said instead.

  To Ryan Shimozato, she said, “Spit out your gum and leave the rest of the pack with me.”

  And to Ashley, she said, “No hats in class, Ms Wong. You know that.”

  To Luke Whitman, she said, “Go to the bathroom immediately and wash your hands.” Actually, that wasn’t such a bad idea.

  To Joelle Adwin, she said, “If I see that phone again, young lady, I’ll take it away for good.”

  And to Frankie, who is a perfect student, she said, “Sit up straight, Mr Townsend. You are at school, not in your living room.”

  Even the new kid, Marcus, didn’t get a “nice to have you with us”. Instead she told him his transfer paperwork was not in order.

  Way to make the new guy feel good, Ms A.

  When she called my name, which was last as usual because my name starts with a Z, she took off her glasses and stared at me like I was a fly on her macaroni cheese.

  “Mr Zipzer, I hope we won’t have a repeat of last year,” she said.

  “You and me both, Ms Adolf,” I said. “I’m going to try my best every day.”

  “Trying is not enough, Henry. I am looking for excellence.”

  “I’m looking for it too,” I answered. “I just haven’t found it.”

  Everyone started to laugh, which I wished they hadn’t, because kids laughing is one of the things that makes Ms Adolf really mad.

  “Fifth grade is no laughing matter,” she said, putting down her register and strolling up and down the aisles. “It’s not fun and games like fourth grade was.”

  Fun and games? Did I miss something? I don’t remember any fun in the fourth grade, and the only games we ever played were spelling games, which don’t exactly zoom to the top of my fun list.

  “Fifth grade is serious business, and I expect you will all find it extremely challenging.”

  Challenging. That’s teacher talk for really hard. Dr Berger uses that word a lot. She is the learning specialist at my school and works with kids like me who have learning difficulties. She’s always telling me that reading is challenging for me. What she’s saying is that it’s harder for me than for a lot of other kids. I don’t mind when she says it, because she’s trying to be nice. But when Ms Adolf said that fifth grade was going to be extremely challenging, I minded it. It made those goose bumps pop up behind my knees again.

  “Of course, we will have many pleasant times as well,” Ms Adolf went on as she circled the classroom and arrived back at the front. “For instance, I plan to have spelling bees every Friday.”

  Wow, get out the party hats. Here come the spelling games.

  “And, of course, there’s Maths Bingo.”

  Toot the horns. Ring the bells. The excitement is almost too much!

  “And we will have the occasional special event.”

  Wait a minute. A special event. That doesn’t sound so bad. Maybe there’ll be refreshments, like doughnuts and punch. That has possibilities.

  “To start our schedule of special events, I’m happy to announce that the Parade of Athletes will be held in the gymnasium a week on Friday.”

  “What’s the Parade of Athletes?” Heather Payne asked. She was already taking notes. “I didn’t see it on the master calendar when I was reviewing it last night.”

  Whoops. We were supposed to review the school calendar. I forgot. Come to think of it, I forgot to take the master calendar home last June.

  I wonder if it’s still in my fourth-grade desk on the second floor. Maybe that piece of red liquorice is still there too. I wonder if it’s too hard to eat by now.

  “The Parade of Athletes is a new school event to honour the many sports that people play,” Ms Adolf said, making it sound as much fun as a dentist appointment.

  I put up my hand.

  “Will there be punch and doughnuts?” I asked.

  “The purpose of the evening is not to consume sugary foods that overstimulate the child,” Ms Adolf said. “The purpose is for those of you who participate in sports to demonstrate your skills.”

  “I’m going to show everyone my ace football moves,” McKelty blurted out. “I was All City last year. The mayor of New York gave me his own personal congratulations.”

  Ashley and Frankie rolled their eyes at me. There it was on the very first day of school: the McKelty Factor. Truth times one hundred. First of all, McKelty is a world-class klutz. And second of all, the mayor of New York City doesn’t even know he exists.

  “Everyone is encouraged to join in the fun,” Ms Adolf said. “I, for one, am looking forward to participating.”

  Ms Adolf? An athlete? What would she demonstrate? Grading papers?

  “What sport do you play?” Ashley asked.

  “I am a fencer,” Ms Adolf said. “I happen to be extremely skil
ful with the foil and saber.”

  Ms Adolf suddenly picked up the stick that she uses to point out the right answers on the overhead projector. “En garde!” she shouted and using the pointer like a sword, she lunged at the classroom door! I swear, if she had been wearing green tights, you would have thought she was Robin Hood.

  Just as she lunged at the door, it swung open, and Mr Rock, our really cool music teacher who was also my summer-school teacher, came in.

  “Whoa, Harriet!” he screamed. “Where are you going with that thing?”

  “I was demonstrating my thrust and parry,” Ms Adolf said. “I got carried away.”

  “It’s good to get carried away,” Mr Rock said with a laugh. “Don’t you think so, kids?”

  Ms Adolf put down the stick and tucked a few loose strands of grey hair up into the bun that she wears on top of her head. “Don’t encourage them,” she said to him. “Now how can I help you, Mr Rock?”

  “I just wanted to make an announcement about tomorrow’s football tryouts,” he said. “Anybody who wants to play can come out to the Sheep Meadow in Central Park after school. The volunteer football coaches will be there to check out your skills and put you on a team.”

  Mr Rock is such a nice guy, he always winks at kids in the corridor for no reason at all.

  “Thank you, Mr Rock,” Ms Adolf said. “And now, if you don’t mind, we have work to do.”

  “Far be it from me to get in the way of work,” he said. Just before he reached the corridor, he stopped and said to all of us, “By the way, guys, we’ll have punch and doughnuts.”

  Then he winked and walked out, leaving us there to face the year with the winkless, punchless, doughnutless Ms Adolf.

  Ms Adolf droned on for the longest two hours in the history of the human race. It was first-day-of-school stuff like how many lines our notebook had to have and how many sharpened HB pencils had to be in our pencil cases at all times. There were also exciting details about how to lay out our homework, and other things that are so boring that if I even mentioned them now, you’d close this book and never pick it up again.