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

by Henry Winkler

  “We’ll go with the handshake hold,” he just said, “if that’s what makes you comfortable.” And that was that.

  I took the bat and stood at the back of the table.

  “Back up, Hank. You’re standing too close,” Mr Chin said.

  “Sam’s just a little guy,” I whispered to him. “He’s going to hit it really softly, so I want to be close.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Mr Chin said, and smiled. “Serve it up, Sammy.”

  Whoosh! In one swift move, Sam sent the ball spinning over the net. I’m sure it hit my side of the table, because I heard it, but I swear to you, I never saw it go by. I felt so stupid just standing there holding my bat. I never even got a chance to take a swing at the ball. My arm never left my side.

  “Ping-Pong is a game of quick reflexes,” Mr Chin said.

  Sam hit another ball to me, and this time I lunged for it. It just hit my bat, went flying across the room and bounced off the far wall.

  I turned and looked at Papa Pete.

  “Practice makes perfect, Hankie,” was all he said.

  “Are you right-handed?” Mr Chin asked me.

  “You’re right,” I said. “And I’m right. Right and right.”

  “Good, so you put your left foot slightly in front of your right foot, spread your feet shoulder width apart and watch the ball as it comes to you. The most important thing is to concentrate on the ball.”

  Concentrate. There’s that word again. Why is concentration so important? And why is it so hard for my brain to do?

  I wonder if there’s a brain garage somewhere where you can drive your brain in and they work on it while you wait. Replace the concentration gizmo. And while you’re at it, give it an oil and lube job too.

  “Hank, are you listening to me?” It was Mr Chin, who must have noticed that I was out there driving my brain around town.

  “Yup,” I said, pulling my brain out of the garage and putting it back in my head where it belonged.

  “When you hit the ball this time, follow through. Your bat should end up in front of your face so that you’re looking at the blade, which is the part of the bat you hit with.”

  Mr Chin was a really good teacher, because when Sam served me the next ball, I hit it exactly where it was supposed to go. It made the perfect sound. I pinged!

  Unfortunately, Sammy ponged, and when the ball came sailing back at me, I missed the next shot. I didn’t care. I was really excited at having hit the ball correctly. It felt as smooth as glass.

  “You must always remember to practise the Three Cs, Hank,” Mr Chin said. “Concentration. Control. Confidence.”

  He made those three Cs sound so simple. If only they were.

  I don’t know where the next hour went, but wherever it went, it went somewhere really fun. I played with Sam for another fifteen minutes, until his mum came to pick him up for dinner. Then the guy with the dreadlocks came over to my table.

  “Hey, little mon. I’ll rally with you,” he said in an accent that sounded like he was singing.

  “But you’re really good,” I said.

  “This is how you get good, mon,” he said. “Rally with everyone. That’s what I did as a boy back in Jamaica.”

  Maurice – that was his name – played with me for another half an hour. At first I was nervous, because I kept missing the ball and having to chase it all over the club. But he gave me lots of good tips, and by the time we had finished, I had actually returned the ball three or four times in a row.

  “Hankie,” Papa Pete said at last. “We have to go now. It’s dinnertime.”

  “Just a few minutes more,” I begged.

  “Yeah, mon. Hank and I are in a groove,” Maurice said.

  “I don’t want to make your mother mad at me,” Papa Pete said. “We’ll come back another time.”

  While I was looking for my rucksack, Mr Chin came up to me. “Here,” he said, handing me a Ping-Pong bat with red rubber on one side and black rubber on the other side. “You can borrow this bat for a while. Keep it with you. Hold it. Let it become your friend.”

  “Wow – thanks, Mr Chin.”

  “And here are two balls for you to practise with. Bounce them on the bat and against a wall until you start to get the feel for it.”

  I couldn’t believe everyone there was being so nice to me. Not like on the football pitch, when Coach Gilroy didn’t even say goodbye to me this afternoon. Actually, he did kind of say goodbye, if you can call “Remember to bring your game face to next practice, Zipzer” a goodbye.

  As we pushed open the door to climb the stairs back up to 81st Street, I was in the best mood.

  “That was so cool,” I said to Papa Pete. “Do you think if I practise really hard, I could beat Maurice?”

  “It could happen,” Papa Pete answered. “Although he is the Jamaican national Ping-Pong champion.”

  “He’s the best player in all of Jamaica?”

  “Last time I checked, that was what champion meant.”

  Wow. I, Hank Daniel Zipzer, have just played the best of the best of the best. And he thought I was OK.

  “Papa Pete, do you think I’m good enough to enter a tournament?”

  “Not yet, Hankie. But there’s always tomorrow.”

  As we walked down Broadway towards home, I was careful to hop over all the cracks in the pavement. I was making a wish, the same wish over and over, and I wanted it to come true.

  I wished that I would win a Ping-Pong tournament and become the Ping-Pong Wizard of New York City. In my mind, I could already see the trophy. It was big. I mean, really big. It was so big that I could use it as a jungle gym if I wanted.

  I couldn’t wait to get home and start practising.

  I must have hit that Ping-Pong ball against my bedroom wall twenty thousand times that night. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I became a Ping-Pong wizard or anything. I was able to get a second hit only about nine times, if that. But hey, that’s nine more times than I ever did before.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Dr Berger about this. She knows that I have difficulties with hand-eye coordination. When Dr Berger first explained hand-eye coordination to me, I didn’t really pay that much attention. What she was talking about seemed really complicated. But when I started to practise hitting the Ping-Pong ball against the wall, it became crystal clear that this hand-eye coordination thing was a problem for me.

  “There’s the ball,” my brain said as the ball bounced off the wall.

  “Where?” my eyes said.

  “Right there.”

  “Whoops, we missed it,” my eyes answered.

  My other problem was that it was really hard to keep track of the ball. I’d start seeing it, and then it would magically disappear. The next thing I knew, I’d hear it hit the leg of my desk and roll under my bed with the dust bunnies.

  “Just keep watching the ball, Hank,” I said to myself. “How hard is that?”

  Apparently, really hard for my particular brain.

  I remember when I was in kindergarten and went to David Platt’s birthday party. In the party bag was one of those wooden bats with the rubber ball on a rubber band. Everyone else grabbed their bat from the party bag and started hitting the ball. They smashed that ball up and down, back and forth on the bat. Not me. When I tried, my ball went in every direction – hit me in forehead even. I could never get it, so I made up an excuse and told everyone that I wasn’t in the mood to play with bats and I was going to do it at home. When I got home, I put that bat in the party bag, where it had stayed pretty much ever since. I can admit it to you now: I hate that toy.

  As I practised hitting the Ping-Pong ball, though, I was determined to get it right. I just planted my feet in my room, sunk my toes into my carpet and hit that little white ball against the wall over and over and over.

  “Hank!” Emily shouted from her room. “That sound is driving Katherine nuts.”

  “She’s already nuts. How would you know the difference?”

  �
��Kathy and I do not appreciate your sarcasm. And, just for your information, she’s trying to hide behind the twig in her cage and her eyes are blinking up a storm.”

  “Maybe her eyelids are sending you a message in Morse code: ‘You are weird, and everyone knows it.’”

  “Iguanas blink when they’re stressed!” Emily shouted. “If you knew even the slightest bit about reptiles, you’d know that.”

  “Here’s a newsflash for you. My brain rejects all reptile knowledge.”

  Our voices must have got very loud, because my dad appeared at my bedroom door. I could tell he had been doing a crossword puzzle because he was wearing two pairs of glasses, one on his forehead and one on his eyes, and his blue mechanical pencil was shoved behind his ear.

  “Hey, hey, what’s going on in here?”

  “Hank keeps hitting that stupid ball against the wall,” Emily said, coming to the door of my room. “It’s driving Katherine and me crazy.”

  “Don’t annoy your sister,” my dad said. “Enough for tonight.”

  “But, Dad, you always tell me that practice makes perfect. How am I going to get great at my new sport if I don’t practise?”

  “Ping-Pong is not a sport. It’s a hobby.”

  “Not true.”

  “Yes, true. Football is your sport. Ping-Pong is your hobby. And doing well in the fifth grade is your goal. Now, don’t you have homework to finish?”

  Why is everything always about homework with him? It’s like there’s only one subject rattling around in his head. Did you do your homework? How much homework do you have? How’s your homework coming on? Have you finished your homework? You can’t listen to music when you’re doing your homework. Why don’t you start on tomorrow’s homework? It’s good to get a leg up on your homework.

  “I just have a maths worksheet,” I said. “I’ll get up early and finish it.”

  “No, you won’t, because I happen to know you have a dentist appointment tomorrow morning,” Emily the walking calendar reported.

  She was right. Somewhere way back in my brain, I remember my mum saying that I had a tooth-cleaning appointment with Dr Crumbworthy. That man talks about flossing like normal people talk about baseball or movies or comic books. He just lights up at the mention of it. And you should see him demonstrate the correct flossing method. He actually breaks out in a sweat from it.

  So here’s what I was looking at. Do maths homework. Go to bed. Get up extra early. Go to the dentist’s. Listen to him scrape my teeth with that pointy metal thing of his.

  I looked at the Ping-Pong bat in my hand. Just a minute ago, we were having a really good time.

  Boy, how a night can change.

  Dr Crumbworthy is missing the fourth finger on his left hand. Well, actually not the whole finger, just the part that has the fingernail on it. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be such a big deal, but when a guy has his hands in your mouth and he’s missing part of a finger, you wonder if another fingertip is going to fall off on your tongue. At least, that’s what I was wondering while he poked around in my mouth with his mirror and silver pointy thing.

  “How’s life treating you, Hank?” he said.

  “Ine,” I answered. OK, you try to say “fine” when you have a mouth of metal and fingers going into all different parts of your mouth.

  “Doing well in school?” he asked.

  Why is that always the second question adults have to ask you after finding out about your health? I mean, why can’t they ask if you’ve seen any funny movies or had a great slice of pizza or ridden on a really cool roller-coaster? You’d think a guy like Dr Crumbworthy would know better. He’s a kids’ dentist, and everyone in my neighbourhood goes to him to have their teeth cleaned and their cavities filled. He should have learned by now that kids don’t really want to discuss how they’re doing at school when that instrument with that little hook at the end is in your molars looking for cavities.

  “Ure,” I answered. S’s are hard too.

  “Is there any reason you have a Ping-Pong bat in your lap?” he asked.

  I forgot to mention that I was holding the Ping-Pong bat while I was at the dentist’s. I had two reasons. First, because Winston Chin had told me to carry it around everywhere and make it my friend, and I took that very seriously. And second, because I thought that in case Dr Crumbworthy poked me too hard, I could hold up the red side of the bat and wave it around like a stop sign.

  There was no way I could explain all of that to Dr Crumbworthy with his nine and a half fingers in my mouth. It wasn’t really necessary anyway, because he likes to keep the conversation going all by himself. I guess you learn to do that when the people you’re talking to can’t answer.

  “There is nothing like a good game of Ping-Pong at the end of the day,” he said. “Have you discovered the Ping-Pong Emporium over on 81st?”

  I nodded. How did he know about our club?

  “That’s a great place,” he said. “I’ve been playing there for a couple years.”

  Wow, it was lucky I hadn’t run into him the day before.

  “It gets pretty hot in there by the end of the night. I like to wear a vest and tracksuit bottoms, but when I get really sweaty, I peel off my tracksuit bottoms and rally in my Speedos.”

  At that thought, I almost bit his finger off. I’m not kidding. Dr Crumbworthy doesn’t know how close he came to having eight and a half fingers.

  “You should try it,” he said. “Just wear Speedos under your tracksuit.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him, and he wouldn’t have been able to understand me anyway, but I’ll play Ping-Pong in my Speedos on the day the Mississippi River flows backwards.

  “I’ve got a great backhand,” he went on. “Even Maurice can’t get anything by me when I unleash my wicked topspin.”

  This was so weird. Two days ago I would have thought this conversation was crazy, and now I’m understanding everything he’s saying.

  Wow, Hank Zipzer, when did you become a Ping-Pong know-it-all?

  “I’m thrilled to see you taking up the sport,” Dr Crumbworthy went on. “Not a lot of young people your age understand the excitement that Ping-Pong has to offer.”

  Suddenly, Dr Crumbworthy took his hands out of my mouth and spun round.

  “I’ve got a great idea!” he said. He went to a keyboard he keeps on a shelf in his office and started to type.

  One thing I haven’t told you about Dr Crumbworthy’s office is that there’s an electronic banner running along his wall that flashes news about kids in his practice. It’s like the runner you see at the bottom of a TV screen if you watch a news channel, which I never personally do. But instead of flashing news about the president’s trip to Europe, or the baseball scores, his flashes contain news like, “Congratulations to Heather Payne for trying minty dental floss.” Or, “Hats off to Luke Whitman for using a toothbrush instead of his fingers.” My sister Emily’s name is always flashing up there for getting the “Clean Teeth Award”. Not only for her but for Katherine, which isn’t that easy since iguanas have 188 teeth to keep clean.

  As Dr Crumbworthy typed, I watched the red letters flash up on the screen. I recognized my name, of course, as it rolled by. But since I’m not the fastest reader in the world, the message had to scroll by a couple of times before I could read the whole thing. It said, “Congratulations to Hank Zipzer for exploring the excitement of Ping-Pong!”

  I have to admit, it felt pretty good to see my name up in lights, flashing like a baseball player’s name on the big scoreboard at Shea Stadium where the Mets play.

  Even when Dr Crumbworthy started poking around in my mouth again, I didn’t mind. My brain was busy. I was thinking that if I won some tournaments, I could get Dr Crumbworthy to post my scores. Everyone at school would see, even Kim Paulson. She’d think they were cute. I’d get famous and people would ask for my autograph on the street. I’d go to the Olympics on the American Ping-Pong team. My picture would be on a box of cereal, with a tiny Hank Zipzer d
oll inside, wrapped in cellophane.

  “Oooowww.” The sound came flying out of my mouth before I could stop it. I held the red side of the bat up in the air.

  “I’m sorry, Hank, did I nick your gums?” Dr Crumbworthy asked.

  “It’s OK,” I told him, “because I want my teeth to look really good when they take my picture for the cereal box.”

  Dr Crumbworthy looked confused. He didn’t know what I was talking about, but he’d find out soon enough.

  At my school, when you come in late from a dentist appointment, the first thing you have to do is check in with Mrs Crock at the attendance office, which is just outside Head Teacher Love’s office.

  Mrs Crock is a really nice person, but she takes a long time to fill out a late form. She types one word on her computer, then takes a bite of the salad that is always sitting in a little plastic bowl next to her.

  “Hi, Hank. I assume you have a note from your dentist,” she said, smiling at me and showing a bit of radish between her teeth. Or maybe it was tomato. Whatever it was, it had definitely come from her salad bowl.

  “Here it is,” I said, pulling the note out of my back pocket along with a bit of light blue fluff and a green Tic Tac.

  While I waited for her to finish the form, I noticed a poster on the wall. It was the sign-up sheet for the Parade of Athletes. A whole bunch of kids had already signed up. Joelle Adwin had signed up to do a gymnastics demonstration. A third-grader named Christopher Hook had signed up for trampoline. Frankie and Ashley were going to demonstrate football dribbling and passing. Funny, they hadn’t asked me. Sarah Stern, a really sweet girl in Emily’s class, was doing karate. Sam Chin had signed up for Ping-Pong. And Nick McKelty had had the unbelievable nerve to sign up for advanced football drills. The only thing he was advanced at was tripping over his own big feet.

  Finally, Mrs Crock finished, but just as I was leaving the office, Mr Love appeared. He has this mole on his cheek that is shaped like the Statue of Liberty – and both he and the Statue of Liberty mole were giving me a nasty look. I’m not kidding, I think the mole was frowning at me.