An Excerpt from The Night I Flunked My Field Trip - Page 3

"I told you yesterday, Henry, that if I did not have your signed permission slip this morning, you would not be allowed to go on the field trip tonight."

"NO!" I shouted. Whoops. I meant to say that to myself. She wouldn't make me miss this field trip, would she?

There are some field trips I wouldn't mind missing. Like the one in second grade when we took the bus to the pumpkin patch and Luke Whitman got carsick and threw up all over my new Converse high-tops. I could've missed that.

But tonight's field trip wasn't just any old one. It was the coolest one ever. Our entire fourth-grade class was going to spend the night on The Pilgrim Spirit, a tall sailing ship that was docked in New York Harbor. And that's not all. We were going to sleep over on the ship and live just like the sailors of long ago did. That means we were going to do neat things like stand watch and tie knots and sing sea songs with the captain and crew.

And now Ms. Adolf was telling me that I couldn't go? No way.

"Ms. Adolf, this isn't fair," I said.

"It's a school rule, and we cannot just break it any old time we choose," she said. "We cannot let you go on a field trip without your parents' permission, Henry. That's final."

"But my dad signed the permission slip this morning," I said. "Just before he left for his crossword puzzle convention. In green ink!"

Another blast of bad breath came flying across the room and hit me in the face like a stinky ball of burning rubber.

"A crossword puzzle convention!" Nick the Tick hooted. "Could your family be any nerdier?"

I have to confess, my family is what some people might call nerdy. Like my sister Emily has a pet iguana named Katherine and they both like to eat sardines. And my dad loves to do crossword puzzles in his boxer shorts at the end of the dining room table we don't eat on. He's a crossword puzzle nut. I mean, he'll wake up in the middle of the night just to write down a seven-letter word for monkey fur. And my mom, all you need to know about her is that her favorite thing to cook is wheatgrass noodle casserole with blueberry flecks. And then there's our dog, Cheerio. When he's not spinning in circles, he likes to lick the bricks on the fireplace just for fun.

But me thinking my family is a little on the nerdy side is a whole lot different than Nick the Tick mouthing off about it. He wasn't getting away with this.

"For your information, McKelty," I said, turning around to face him. "My dad once finished an entire New York Times crossword puzzle in four minutes and thirty-seven seconds. That's a tri-county record."

"Big deal," snorted McKelty. "My dad once shook hands with the king of Ethiopia."

"Like that has anything to do with anything," piped up Ashley Wong, my other best friend, who was sitting across the aisle from me.

Ashley hates it when McKelty brags, especially since most of what he says isn't true, anyway. Like in this case, maybe Nick McKelty saw a map of Ethiopia once. Suddenly, he makes it seem like his dad is best friends with the king. We call this the McKelty Factor" truth times a hundred.

Ashley went over to McKelty's desk. Even though he's huge and she's little and wears glasses, Ashley's not afraid of McKelty. She says he's all hot air. Rotting food, bad-smelling hot air, I might add. Don't his parents encourage him to brush?

I'm not sure exactly what Ashley was planning to do, but Ms. Adolf didn't like the look of things and hurried over to settle the argument. That gave Frankie a chance to talk to me.

"Take a deep breath, Zip, and fill your brain with oxygen," he said.

Frankie's mom is a yoga teacher. She's so flexible, she can touch the back of her head with the tips of her toes. She's been telling us since we were little that oxygen is brain food. I took a deep breath, in through my nose and out through my mouth, just like Frankie's mom had taught us.

"Now think, Zippola," Frankie went on, "because your field trip future depends on this. What did you do with the permission slip?"

I played back the morning in my mind, like rewinding a tape from Blockbuster.

"I got out of bed and took a really long pee."

"Nix the yucky details," said Frankie.

"I got a pen. Got the permission slip from my three-ring binder."

"Now you're talking," Frankie nodded. "Then what?" 

"Took the permission slip to my dad. Had him sign it. Put it on the hall table under the Chinese vase. Got dressed. Put on my green jacket. Kissed my mom good-bye. Grabbed my backpack. Ran out of the house."

"And forgot the permission slip under the Chinese vase," said Frankie.
Bingo!

There it was.

At least I knew the location of the permission slip. Now all I had to do was get it - immediately, if not sooner!

© 2004 by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver. Reprinted with permission.

Additional Resources