The World's Greatest Underachiever and the Lucky Monkey Socks

by Henry Winkler

  “Quiet, pupils,” she said. “I see nothing funny about a little chalk dust.”

  “You would, if you could see your butt,” said Luke. “It’s hilarious.”

  We couldn’t help laughing again. I could see red splotches flaring up on Ms Adolf’s cheeks, which is a sign that she’s steaming mad. She took off the silver key she wears on a cord round her neck and unlocked the top drawer of her desk. Picking up her register, she wrote a little note next to Luke’s name and then took out the corridor pass.

  “I think you know where you’re going with this,” she said to Luke, handing him the pass.

  “To the dining room for a snack?” said Luke.

  “Absolutely not,” said Ms Adolf. “You just march to Mr Love’s office. That’s where pupils who insist on talking about their teacher’s hindquarters go.”

  As Luke left the room, he looked at me and said, “I’ll keep the seat warm for you.”

  I said a secret thank you that, this time, it wasn’t me going to Mr Love’s office. Believe me, I’ve spent plenty of time sitting across from Mr Love. Doing mole time, we call it. That’s because Head Teacher Love has this mole on his face that’s shaped like the Statue of Liberty without the torch. When he talks to you, his mole shakes like crazy and it looks like the Statue of Liberty has ants in her pants. All you can do is stare at it while trying not to stare.

  “These are the final teams for tomorrow’s Olympiad,” Ms Adolf said, pointing to the blackboard. “Half of you have been assigned to the Yellow Team, and the other half is on the Blue Team. Check over the list on the board, and make sure you have been assigned to the event you tried out for.”

  I looked at the board. Ashley was listed as the manager of the Yellow Softball Team. Frankie was a member of the team. Kim Paulson, the second most beautiful girl in our class, was on the Yellow Team too, as was Ryan Shimozato, who is an awesome athlete. Nick McKelty, the single most obnoxious human being ever hatched, had been assigned to the Blue Softball Team. At least Frankie and Ashley weren’t going to have to play on the same team as Nick the Tick.

  My name was listed under Triple C. I had enrolled for that event because, at the time, it was my only choice. I knew I couldn’t play softball, and I certainly wasn’t qualified to be on the Brain Buster Squad. So that left the Triple C as the only event I even had a shot at. I happen to be really good at sharpening all the pencils in my desk so that they are exactly the same length. I thought that would impress the judges, for sure.

  Ashley stuck her hand up in the air and Ms Adolf called on her.

  “Yes, Ms Wong,” she said.

  “I’d like to request a change in teams,” said Ashley. “As manager of the Yellow Softball Team, I am requesting that Hank Zipzer be transferred to my team.”

  “That’s your first mistake, girlfriend!” shouted a voice from behind us. I didn’t have to look. It was McKelty’s voice. He’s really loud and always sounds like he’s laughing at you, which by the way, he usually is.

  I poked Ashley across the aisle.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “Frankie told me about the socks,” she whispered back. “This is your lucky chance, so I went ahead and put you on the team.”

  “Ash, I can’t.”

  “Hank, I saw you throw. You’re dynamite.”

  Frankie’s hand shot up. “As the official catcher of the Yellow Team, I’d like to second Manager Wong’s request for Zipzer. We’d like to draft him.”

  “Is this all right with you, Henry?” Ms Adolf asked me. She is the only person in the world who calls me Henry, except for my mother when she’s mad. Ms Adolf doesn’t believe in nicknames. She thinks they’re unnecessary.

  “Yes, Ms Adolf, it’s OK with him,” Ashley said before I had a chance to speak up. “We’ve already discussed it.”

  “I can’t believe you’re drafting Zipper Boy!” snorted McKelty. “I wouldn’t draft him for the toilet squad.”

  That’s exactly the kind of thing Nick McKelty says all the time – it’s just mean and creepy. A bunch of kids giggled.

  That guy was making my blood boil, especially now that he had the class laughing. I looked down at my white socks and knew that the lucky monkey socks were underneath, just waiting to be used.

  Why not? What are lucky socks good for, if not to put jerks like McKelty in their place?

  “Hey, McKelty,” I whispered. “Meet me on the athletic field after school. I’ve got something to show you.”

  “What’s that, Zipper Face?” he snarled, blasting some of his bad breath over my way.

  “Two words,” I said. “Guess what they are?”

  “Girly throw?” he said.

  I shot him my most confident grin and whispered the two words.

  “Secret weapon.”

  At exactly three o’clock, Frankie, Ashley and I were on the athletic field, waiting at the baseball diamond that had been set up for the Olympiad. Robert Upchurch was there too, for no particular reason except that he always clings on to us and we can never shake him off.

  “Robert,” Frankie said. “Go home.”

  “I’m on the Yellow Team too,” Robert said. “I have a right to be here.”

  “You’re in the Triple C,” Ashley said. “Look around, Robert. This is a baseball diamond.”

  “Actually, it’s a softball diamond,” said Robert. “A baseball diamond has to meet set measurements. Would you like me to tell you what those are, because I have committed them to memory?”

  “No,” we all said at once.

  “Another time, maybe,” Robert said. He saw Nick McKelty approaching, and he knew this was no time for nerd talk. I gave him credit for shutting his mouth.

  McKelty came lumbering up, his big feet slapping the pavement like clown shoes. He smiled, not in a friendly way, and I could see his after-school snack hanging from the corners of his mouth. It looked like chocolate pudding or maybe butterscotch.

  “Can we hurry up with your little party?” he said. “I’ve got to get home because my dad is taking me to a private feast at the best Chinese restaurant in Manhattan. In fact, it’s the best Chinese restaurant in the world, except for the one in China that we’re going to this summer.”

  Of course, we all knew none of this was true. Nick’s dad, who owns McKelty’s Roll ’N Bowl over on Amsterdam Avenue, was probably buying him a rice bowl at Uncle Ming’s Chop Suey House right next door. But Nick McKelty always has to exaggerate everything. We call it The McKelty Factor: Truth times a hundred.

  “We just thought we’d show you a little sample of our secret weapon,” Ashley said. “Be afraid, McKelty. Be very afraid.”

  Ashley gave me the signal, and I took the mound. Frankie got behind home plate and squatted down. He held his mitt out in front of him.

  “Put it here, Zip!” he hollered.

  I reached down and pretended to be scratching my ankle. What I was really doing was making sure the monkey socks were awake and ready to give me some extra luck. I took a deep breath, focused on Frankie’s glove, wound up and released the ball.

  Bam! It shot through the air like a cannon, whipping across the plate and landing dead centre in Frankie’s mitt.

  McKelty didn’t say a word, but his big jaw flopped open like a barn door in the wind. Ashley smiled at him and waved.

  “Just a little sample of what you can expect tomorrow,” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, we have to get our secret weapon home. We don’t want to wear him out.”

  We walked off the field, leaving McKelty there with his face still flapping in the breeze.

  The minute we were off the field, we burst out laughing.

  “That was awesome, Zip,” Frankie said.

  “Yeah, too bad I won’t be able to do it tomorrow in the real game,” I said, suddenly realizing the awful truth.

  “What are you talking about?” Ashley said. “You can and you will.”

  I shook my head. “Emily will never give me the monkey socks to we
ar tomorrow. She needs them for the Brain Buster Competition. And, without them, I can’t throw worth beans.”

  “Tell Emily she HAS to let you wear the socks,” said Ashley.

  “She needs them too,” I answered.

  “Actually,” Robert said, “your sister is the most brilliant third-grader in the world. You don’t need luck when you have a brain like hers.”

  Robert should know. He and Emily are really good friends in a nerdy kind of way.

  All the way home, I thought about what Robert had said. Emily didn’t need the luck. I did.

  The thought rolled round and round in my mind. What if she just couldn’t find the monkey socks by tomorrow morning? Things get lost, don’t they? It could happen.

  Should I or shouldn’t I? Should I or shouldn’t I? Should I or shouldn’t I?

  When we got home, I went to my room and took off the white socks. Oh, were my toes happy to be released from the prison of two pairs of tight socks. I could hear Emily outside in the corridor, frantically searching every cupboard in the house for the monkey socks.

  Should I or shouldn’t I?

  Slowly, I peeled off the red monkey socks, tucked them underneath my Mets sweatshirt and closed the drawer very quietly.

  EIGHT REASONS WHY I SHOULD KEEP THE MONKEY SOCKS AND NOT GIVE THEM BACK TO EMILY

  1. I have a right to finally win. Don’t I?

  2. Emily is so smart, she doesn’t really need the socks.

  3. It really isn’t right to keep them, but Emily has to understand I am the one who needs them.

  4. It really isn’t right.

  5. Boy, it really isn’t right.

  6. Oh, I really want it to be right, but it isn’t.

  7. Why couldn’t it be right?

  8. Because it isn’t.

  Oh, do I hate being good.

  Why couldn’t I be Nick the Tick? Not only would he have not given his sister the monkey socks, he would have burned them and buried the ashes in the sandpit at school.

  I walked round and round my bedroom, making a ring in the carpet from pacing.

  I know I should give up the socks, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

  No matter how closed my door was, I could still hear Emily crying up a storm because her precious little red-and-pink socks were lost.

  Wait a minute. Yup, there it is. She’s on the lino in the hall pounding her fists and kicking her feet.

  Who was she kidding? She couldn’t fail if she tried.

  OK! OK! I can’t take it any more. Here goes nothing.

  I flung my door open, ran into the corridor and threw the socks at my sister. One landed right in front of her face and the other fell on the middle of the back of her head, so it looked like she had a third pigtail. Pigtails suit her perfectly. They go so well with her snout for a nose.

  I went back into my room and slammed the door. Wow! I didn’t know I had so much power. It felt as if the wall shook. My teeth shook.

  My mum came running out of the kitchen. “Is everything all right? What’s going on?” she asked.

  Emily didn’t answer.

  I didn’t answer either. I was in my room walking in that circle again, trying to figure out how I could be so stupid as to give up the socks.

  “What were you thinking, Hank?” I kept saying over and over again.

  “Henry,” my mum called out. “You get out here this instant!”

  Maybe one day I will be able to not listen to my name, to not march into the hall and face the firing squad, but today was not that day.

  I threw my door open, went into the hall, and said the shortest sentence I could think of.

  “What?” I said, not looking at either of them.

  “Don’t what me, young man,” my mum said. “Where exactly did the socks come from?”

  “Well, first they have to pick the cotton to make the material and then they dye it red. Now once it’s out of the dye…”

  “Henry, cut that out right now,” she said in her stern voice. When my mother uses “Henry”, no joke in the world can calm her down.

  “OK,” I started. “It was a mistake. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “Big surprise,” Emily said.

  “Emily, not now,” Mum said.

  “I wasn’t paying attention because I didn’t want to keep Papa Pete waiting, Emily. So, I grabbed the first pair of socks on top of the laundry basket. We went to play catch in the courtyard because I wouldn’t be caught dead in those monkey socks in the park. Except they made me pitch better than I ever have before and I really, really need them for tomorrow’s game. But, no, Miss I-Do-Everything-Right would never let me borrow them.”

  “Boy, are you right,” Emily interrupted.

  “See, what’s the use?” I yelled as I ran back into my room and slammed the door again.

  A millisecond later, I opened it and screamed from the doorway. “I think that stinks worse than you stink, Emily Zipzer! And that’s that!”

  I kicked the door closed. It slammed so hard, it was as if it was shouting to everyone, “Keep out of my room! Keep out of my life! And I really mean it!”

  I was so mad, there was steam coming out of my ears. I flopped down on my bunk bed, put the pillow over my head and started to scream. I would tell you what I said, but if your parents read those words they would take this book away from you and tell you that you couldn’t read it until you were eighteen-and-a-half.

  Even through the pillow, I could hear my mum’s voice.

  “Stan! I need you here.”

  “I’m busy, Randi,” my dad called back. “I found a hair on my earlobe and I’m pulling it out with tweezers.”

  “That can wait, Stanley.”

  Oh no it can’t. Dad, keep doing what you’re doing.

  Apparently, he either got the hair quicker than he expected or gave up the search for others, because ten seconds later, my dad pushed the door to my room open.

  “What’s the problem?” he said.

  “There’s no problem. Emily gets her way, as usual. She’s got her monkey socks and I won’t be able to pitch for the rest of my life.”

  “Hank, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” my dad said.

  My mum stuck her head in my room.

  “I’m calling a family meeting,” she said.

  “Why not?” I was still screaming mad. “Let’s all sit around and talk about how great Emily is. As a matter of fact, I can’t wait. Why don’t I just start right now?”

  “Calm down, Hank,” my dad said. “Let’s talk this over like reasonable people.”

  We sat down at the dining-room table. We took the same places we sit in at dinner – my dad at the head, my mum in the one nearest the kitchen, Emily on her left and me on her right. Or maybe it’s me on her right and Emily on her left. Wait a minute, let me figure this out. I know that the pinky finger on my left hand is a little shorter than the one on my right, but I’m on the other side of the table, so I have to stand up and turn my back and then see where the short pinky finger is. Yup, she was on my mum’s left.

  Emily put Katherine down on the middle of the table.

  “Who invited the lizard to our family meeting?” I asked.

  Katherine must have known that I was talking about her, because she stared at me with her beady little eyes and then stuck her tongue out at me, as if to say, “I’m here, what do you want to do about it, Zipper Boy?”

  “I don’t see why we need a family meeting,” Emily began. “The creep took my socks. They’re my socks, not his socks.”

  “Hank, your turn to express yourself,” said my mum. She believes in expressing yourself.

  “I didn’t take her socks,” I said. “They must have known I needed them and they ended up on my feet. All I’m asking is to wear them for one day and one day only. Not even a day. Just for two hours during the Olympiad softball game. I don’t see why that’s such a problem.”

  “Because those are the same two hours that I’m participating in the Brain B
uster Competition. And I need my lucky socks to lead the team to victory.”

  “What about my victory in the softball game?”

  “What victory is that?” Emily the Perfect said. “It would take more than monkey socks to get you to do anything right.”

  “That’s enough, you two,” my dad said. “First, let me say that I don’t believe monkey socks bring luck.”

  “Of course,” my mum chimed in. “We all know there’s no such thing as a lucky charm.”

  “Although,” my dad said, “I do have a silver mechanical pencil, the one I got for being a six-year subscriber to TIME magazine. And I do seem to complete my crossword puzzles faster with that particular pencil.”

  “Stanley, this isn’t about your crossword puzzles,” my mum pointed out.

  “You’re right, Randi,” he agreed, running his hands through his hair, which was already in its usual messy condition.

  “Trust me, Dad,” I pleaded. “I need them more than I’ve ever needed anything in my whole life.”

  “Not as much as I need them,” said Emily.

  My dad held up his hand, letting us both know that we were to stop talking. He looked out at us over the top of his glasses the way he does when he’s thinking of an especially hard word in his crossword puzzle.

  “Well,” he began, “as we’re talking about a PAIR of socks, a very clear solution presents itself. There are two children in this family. There are two socks in a pair. We are one family, and one for all and all for one. Are you following my line of thinking?”

  “No,” I said. “You lost me after ‘Well’.”

  “All right, let me try this,” he continued. “Two kids. Two socks. Two divided by two is what?”

  “How should I know, Dad?” This conversation was driving me crazy. “Check back with me after sixth grade. Maybe I’ll be able to do division by then.”

  “Two divided by two is one,” said Emily. I looked at Katherine, and I know this is going to sound weird, but she shot me a look as if to say, “Even I knew that, dodo brain.”