The World's Greatest Underachiever and the Parent-Teacher Trouble

by Henry Winkler

  Boy, did I want to get my dad out of there. We needed to finish the arrangements with Cousin Ralphie, and I didn’t want my dad hearing about the concert until I had the whole plan figured out. I motioned to Frankie with my eyes, but he wasn’t getting it. I motioned with my head, and he still wasn’t getting it.

  “Hello,” I whispered. “Ding-dong, anyone home?”

  Frankie looked puzzled. Finally, I jerked my thumb towards the door. I gestured towards the living room, then towards my dad.

  “I think you might find the word he’s looking for in the living room,” I said. “You know, that room out there. The one where I’m NOT talking on the phone.”

  “Right!” Ashley said.

  “Righhhht,” I said.

  Frankie nodded. At last, he was with the programme. He’s usually good at picking stuff right up.

  “Come on, Mr Z.,” he said. “Let’s go into the living room. I always find that synonyms for rodents come to me a lot faster out there.”

  “Maybe it’s because the ceilings are higher,” I threw in.

  “Yeah,” said Frankie. “There’s more oxygen floating around. It’s better for the brain.”

  Before my dad could answer, Frankie and Ashley had him by the arm and were escorting him back to the living room.

  Robert laughed his snorty little nerd laugh, which sounds like the noise my dog, Cheerio, makes when he has a cold.

  “More oxygen in the living room,” he snorted. “Actually, Hank, everyone knows that the number of oxygen molecules per cubic foot varies according to the density of the atmosphere, not the height of the ceiling.”

  “That’s so interesting, Robert. I think you should go and see if that theory works in your flat. Like now.”

  “But what about Katherine?” he said. “She needs me.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” I agreed. “Katherine needs you … to leave the room. Bye-bye, little man.”

  I basically shoved Robert out the door, which is easy to do because his bony little self doesn’t weigh much more than a pocket rat soaking wet. Come to think of it, he looks like a soaking wet rat, except without the tail.

  I put the phone back to my ear.

  “Are you still with me, caller number fifteen?” Cousin Ralphie said. “What is your name again?”

  “Hank Zipzer,” I answered.

  “That’s a WFUN kind of name,” he said. “Zippy but not zipified.”

  I laughed. Cousin Ralphie was always so funny and full of words. It must be amazing to have words on the tip of your tongue like that, to never have to search for a thought. Me, I’m always looking for the next word, the right word, any word. My brain isn’t smooth like that. It’s more like a dark, rocky cave with words and thoughts hiding behind every boulder. And I’m in there searching around without a torch.

  “Hank Zipzer, here’s what you’ve won for the parental unit: they’ll be picked up by limousine and driven in style to Philadelphia. They’ll get the red-carpet treatment backstage at the Theatre of Brotherly Love as they arrive for the Stone Cold Rock concert.”

  Wow. That sounded great. I wished I was going.

  “At the concert, they’ll be treated to front-row seats, after which they’ll join the band for Philadelphia cheesesteaks, the city’s most famous sandwich.”

  My mouth was watering. I could almost taste that cheesesteak.

  “The next day, they’ll ride back to New York City in luxury on the fully stocked tour bus. And by the way, if they’re into tattoos, we’ll make a stop at our favourite tattoo artist, who will give them any design of their choice on any part of their body. How’s that sound?”

  “Do they have to do the tattoo part?” I asked. “My dad passes out when he has to get a flu jab at the doctor’s surgery.”

  Cousin Ralphie laughed. “You’re a funny dude, Hank,” he said. “Real zipperific.”

  Cousin Ralphie took my phone number and told me that someone would call later to make all the arrangements. I thanked him about a hundred and fifty-eight times. He thought I was just thanking him for winning the trip. But I was really thanking him for making it possible for me to go on to the fifth grade.

  I hung up the phone and let out a big sigh of relief. For a split second, I had that wonderful floating feeling you get when all your problems are solved. But that feeling only lasted for a second. Maybe even less. Because right away I realized that problem number two was waiting for me in the living room.

  There was my dad, sitting in his blue boxer shorts, chewing on his mechanical pencil, hunched over his crossword puzzle, trying to come up with a synonym for an extinct rodent.

  How on earth was I going to convince him that he really, really, really couldn’t live without going to see a Stone Cold Rock concert?

  This wasn’t going to be easy.

  ***Hank’s Note: Sorry, all I could come up with were eight reasons. So get a pencil, go up to the top of this chapter, cross out the word “ten” and write the word “eight”. Unless this is a library book. You never write in a library book. I made that mistake once and had to spend my next three weeks’ pocket money replacing the book.

  I had my list, and I had my work cut out for me.

  I told Ashley and Frankie to wait in my bedroom, and I marched myself into the living room. I stood in front of my dad and looked him right in the face. I told him about the concert and how I’d won the trip to Philadelphia for Mum and him. I told him how totally great that was, how there were people in any city in the world who would kill to have those tickets.

  Then I recited all the reasons on my list as to why he should go.

  Correction. I didn’t just recite the reasons. Nope, I acted them out like I was auditioning to star in a Spider-Man movie. With feeling. With guts. With all my heart.

  My dad sat there and listened to me. He nodded thoughtfully. If you just looked at him, his head going up and down, a little smile curling up at the corner of his mouth, his chin resting calmly in his hand – you’d be 100 per cent sure you were seeing a yes.

  But if you opened your ears and listened, you would have heard him say one of the smallest words in the English language that goes a little something like this:

  NO!

  My mum’s dad is named Papa Pete, and he is not only the nicest grandpa in the world, he is one of the smartest too. Papa Pete always tells me that a “no” is just an opportunity for a “yes”. So when my dad said no, that he had absolutely zero interest in going to a rock concert in Philadelphia, or anywhere else in the world, I took it as an opportunity to turn that little tiny no into a big, fat yes.

  “But, Dad,” I said, running after him as he stomped off into the kitchen, “you’ve got to be open-minded to the possibilities of new adventures. Isn’t that what you always tell me when I don’t want to eat one of Mum’s new food experiments?”

  “Hank, there is a big difference between you taking a bite of your mother’s meatless papaya mixed-nut burgers, and me standing in a stadium full of lighter-waving, leather-trouser-wearing fans shaking their rumps to music without melody that gives me a headache.”

  “Dad, can you honestly look me square in the eye and tell me you want to miss out on all that fun?”

  “Yes,” he said, looking at me square in the eye. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Aren’t you perceptive?”

  “Sometimes, Dad, you shock me, because knowing you as I do—”

  “Hank,” my dad interrupted, “I am not going to the rock concert in Philadelphia. End of discussion.”

  He left the room and went into the kitchen. I could hear him opening the fridge to get out the cranberry juice and fizzy water. He mixes them together to make a half-and-half, a drink that to me tastes really sour, but he says is ahh … so refreshing.

  I turned round to see Frankie and Ashley creeping into the living room. They had obviously been standing by the door, listening.

  “OK, so that didn’t work out so well,” Ashley said.

  “No problem,” I answ
ered. “We’ll just move on to Plan B.”

  “You’re a man of action, Zip,” Frankie said. “That’s what I like. Now, what is Plan B?”

  “I have no idea.” I shrugged. “I was hoping you had one.”

  “There’s got to be something that’s going to make him want to go to Philadelphia,” Ashley said. “We just have to figure out what that is.”

  “My dad says people travel to see something they love,” Frankie said. “Like when we went to Zimbabwe to see the village where my ancestors came from.”

  “And my dad went to Moscow to look at videos of the small bowel function,” Ashley said.

  By the way, you should know that Ashley’s dad is a doctor and not some kind of nutcase who loves to watch movies of people’s guts in action.

  “What are the things your dad loves?” Frankie said to me as he plopped down into my dad’s armchair. “Besides crossword puzzles, which we all know he loves more than cranberry juice itself.”

  “He loves my mum,” I answered.

  I sat down on the sofa next to Cheerio, who was asleep on his favourite cushion. Without even waking up, he cuddled up next to me and put his head on my lap and shook his leg like he was chasing something in his dream.

  “No, dude, that doesn’t help us get him to Philadelphia, because your mum is here,”

  Frankie said.

  “We could kidnap her and leave a note saying that he’ll find her in Philadelphia,” I suggested.

  “That’s extreme, Zip,” Frankie said. “Use your brain. What else does he love?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, if you don’t know, who does know? You’re his son.”

  “I’m just stupid,” I snapped. “Maybe I deserve to stay back in fourth grade.” I scratched Cheerio behind the ears. Dogs are lucky, I thought. The only thing they have to learn in school is how not to pee on the carpet. I could learn that. It’s the long division I don’t get.

  “Guys, we don’t have time for you to argue,” Ashley said. “We have to keep our attention on the goal, which is to get your mum and dad to Philadelphia. And by the way, you’re not stupid, Hank.”

  “Bingo,” said Frankie.

  “Bingo. I like the sound of that! Bingo what?”

  “Bingo, as in let’s come up with an idea,” Frankie said.

  All three of us stared at one another, trying to come up with an answer to the question – what would it take to change my dad’s mind?

  It was so quiet, I could hear car horns honking on the street ten floors below. I heard the lift doors opening in the hall outside our door, footsteps, then the soft slap of the doors closing. It was probably our neighbour Mrs Fink leaving for the painting class she takes over at the senior centre on Amsterdam Avenue. Every painting she does is a picture of food. Her last painting was called Kebab: A Study of Meat on a Stick. It showed these really juicy chunks of meat on a skewer looking all spicy and delicious, just like they are in real life when Amir grills them on his cart on the corner of 74th Street and Columbus Avenue.

  “What’s going on, Hank?” Ashley asked. “You look like you have a good idea.”

  “I was wondering if Amir is making kebabs right now. I could sure go for one,” I answered.

  Frankie shot me a look I knew really well, because I’d been getting it from him my whole life.

  “Get with the programme, Zip,” he said. “We’re thinking Philadelphia now, not roasted lamb.”

  Maybe he was thinking of Philadelphia, but I was way, way down the roasted lamb road. Welcome to the inside of my brain. It goes where it wants, whenever it wants. There was no chance of pulling it back now.

  “I have a suggestion,” I said. “Why don’t we move on to Plan C?”

  And we did. In fact, we moved all the way to Plan M. We sat on the sofa and thought. We flopped down on the living-room carpet and thought. We stood in the hall and thought. We went into my bedroom and listened to the radio and thought. Every plan we came up with had something wrong with it. We just couldn’t come up with the perfect magnet that would attract my dad to Philadelphia.

  There it was – Philadelphia. That city where Benjamin Franklin flew his kite. Where the founding fathers wrote the Constitution. Where the Phillies and the Eagles play baseball. And most importantly, where my parent-teacher meeting was not.

  Only two little, tiny, measly hours from New York. So near, and yet so far.

  Frankie and Ashley had to go back to their flats for dinner, and by the time they left, I still had no plan. I was left with no one to help me come up with an idea. No one but my sister, Emily, that is, who probably wouldn’t want to help me, anyway. Besides, I don’t know if you have a younger sister, but even if you don’t, I think you’d agree that a person would have to be very desperate to ask his younger sister for help.

  OK, I confess. I was desperate.

  While my mum was in the kitchen preparing dinner, I walked into Emily’s room and flopped down on her bed like it was something I did every day.

  “Get your dirty trainers off my bedspread,” she said.

  That wasn’t exactly the Hi-Hank-Welcome-to-My-Room kind of greeting I was hoping for, but I could make it work. Trying to be nice, I gave Katherine a smile as if I really liked her. She was crawling across the room, hissing at a pair of Emily’s football socks. Then I picked up Emily’s pillow and propped it under my head. It was stiff and made a crinkling sound when I put my head on it, not like my pillow, which is soft and fluffy.

  “Your pillow feels like it’s stuffed with crackers,” I said.

  “That shows what you know,” Emily said, looking up.

  She was sitting at her desk, painting every fingernail with a different coloured nail polish. “It’s filled with synthetic fibres that keep my allergies from flaring up. It’s called hypo-

  allergenic.”

  “Well, if you ask me, it’s hypo-annoying,” I said.

  “Why don’t you make like a tree and leaf,” Emily said.

  She laughed her little nerd laugh. Ordinarily, I would have pointed out that only kids in first grade think that joke is funny, but since I was about to ask a favour, I decided to laugh as if I hadn’t heard that joke a hundred million times. She looked a little surprised when I held my sides and let out an earsplitting hoot.

  “You’re funny, Emily,” I said, crossing my fingers and toes and anything else you could possibly cross. That girl is about as funny as a cow with wind, and we all know there’s nothing funny about that.

  I guess Emily didn’t buy my attempt to be charming, because she just stared at me and said, “What do you want, Hank?”

  “I want Mum and Dad to miss my parent-teacher day on Friday.”

  Emily didn’t even answer me. Instead, she looked at Katherine and talked to her like she was a person and not a lower life form.

  “Get it, Kathy? Hank wants Mum and Dad to go to the concert instead of meeting his teacher.”

  Katherine looked back at Emily and hissed. Emily took that for some kind of answer, because she went on talking to Katherine like I wasn’t even in the room.

  “I know, Kathy. Parent-teacher days are no big deal for some people. Mum and Dad went to mine last week, and my teacher told them I was getting all As and that I’m highly gifted.”

  I may not be highly gifted like my sister, but at least I don’t have long conversations with hissing reptiles.

  “Emily, I’m over here,” I said. “Could you maybe talk to me, since I’m the only other human in the room?”

  Emily put some hot pink polish on her thumbnail, held it out and looked at it like she was Pablo Picasso. He was a famous artist who was this really cool guy, because he walked around in shorts and no shirt even when he was eighty years old. Mr Rock, the music teacher at my school, has told me all about him.

  “Mum and Dad wouldn’t miss your parent-teacher day, Hank,” Emily said in her goody-goody, know-it-all voice.

  “They don’t know about it, Smarty-pants,” I answ
ered. “It’s not on the calendar. I moved the greaseproof paper and the silver foil and guess what? The whole month of May is blank. Plus, I’ve still got the permission slip in my rucksack. They haven’t seen it yet.”

  Emily blew on her fingernails to dry the polish.

  “So, great,” she said. “You’ve got a plan. Now can you leave my room?”

  “There’s one problem, though. Dad said no to Philadelphia.”

  Katherine snapped her sticky grey tongue out at me, just missing my ankle by an inch. She had made it across the room and was lying on some football shorts next to the bed, her snout resting on Emily’s pile of lavender vocabulary flash cards. Boy, if that wasn’t a cover shot for Geek World magazine, I didn’t know what was.

  “Which colour polish should I put on my pinkie – the dark purple or the sparkling orange?” Emily asked me, holding up her hands to admire her manicure work.

  “They’re both ugly,” I said.

  “It’s too bad you think that,” Emily said, “because if you were nice to me, I was going to tell you my idea for getting Dad interested in going to the concert.”

  “The sparkling orange is really cute,” I said without missing a beat. Hey, I told you I was a desperate man.

  “Want to help me paint my toenails?” Emily said as she applied the orange polish to her pinkie finger.

  “I’d rather eat raw goat,” I answered.

  “That’s too bad,” Emily said, “because I think I have the answer to your little problem, but I can only tell you if you help me with my toenails.”

  “Exactly how good is this plan of yours?” I growled.

  Emily put her foot out and handed me a bottle of lime-green nail polish.

  “Paint and you’ll find out.” She wiggled her toes at me. I knew she didn’t really want to help me – she just wanted to see me polishing her stupid toenails. Oh, boy, she had me in a corner, and she was loving it.

  I grabbed the nail polish, unscrewed the top and slopped a glob of it on her big toe. I promised myself right then and there that I would get her back for this some day.