Barfing in the Backseat (5 page)

That sandwich was so delicious that even my mom, who is not an eater of greasy meats, had to take a bite. Actually, she took two bites. Then she broke down and ordered her own sandwich. I’m telling you guys, the Queen of Tofu ate an entire Philly cheesesteak. And licked her chops afterward.

We were all crowded around the little outside table huddled close to the outdoor heater, chowing down on our sandwiches. Even Katherine, in her crate next to Emily’s feet, was slurping up a few grilled onions while hissing at the pigeons that were strutting on the sidewalk. I was right in the middle of my sandwich, at the part where
all the juices are running up and down your arm, and thinking that this was one of the greatest days of my life, when my dad spoke up.

“So, Hank,” he said, rolling up the paper his sandwich had come in. “What’s the plan of attack for finishing your homework packet?”

I almost gagged on my sandwich right there in front of all those nice Philadelphia people and their pigeons.

Dad, who talks about homework in the middle of a cheesesteak?

“Can we talk about this another time, Dad? Like, say, never?”

“You’ve got to tackle some every day,” my dad went on, as though he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. “You don’t want to get behind and then have to play catch-up. That’s a serious amount of work you have there.”

Boy, he must have gone to a special school to study how to make a guy lose his appetite.

“I promise you, Dad. I have the situation under control. I plan to start on the packet tonight, when we get to the motel in Washington, D.C.”

“That’s not realistic, Hank,” my dad said.
“It’ll be after dinner when we get there, and we’ll all be exhausted.”

“Then I’ll start it tomorrow night,” I promised. “And I’ll do at least half of it.” Frankie shot me a look, as if to say, “You’re laying it on pretty thick, dude.” But apparently, my dad didn’t think so.

“Good, Hank, that’s what I like to hear. Tomorrow we’ll go sightseeing, and then we’ll leave the whole evening free so you can do nothing but homework, homework, homework.”

Trust me. Any sentence that has the word homework in it three times in a row is not a sentence you want to hear.

I looked over at Katherine. She was just lying there in her crate, sucking down a few more slices of onion. For that minute, I actually envied her. True, she is a lower life form. But then, lower life forms don’t have to do homework packets. And that, I thought, was a definite plus for them.

After lunch, we drove about three more hours to Washington, D.C. and checked into the Comfort-For-U Motel. Frankie and I got a room of our own that connected to my Mom and Dad and Emily’s. And of course, they wouldn’t let
us lock the door. We all went to bed right after dinner, because my dad wanted to get an early start the next day. We were going to the Library of Congress in the morning, and he wanted to be full of energy to look through all those dictionaries and card catalogs and other boring things.

As I settled down on my pillow, I thought about how my dad loved books and words and reading and puzzles.

I sure don’t take after him
was the last thing I remember thinking before I fell fast asleep.

I
WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING
totally nervous about my homework packet. I had dreamed that it had arms and legs and a mean, nasty face and was chasing me down a dark alley and yelling, “I’m going to get you, Hank. You’ll never escape me!”

While Frankie was still sleeping, I tiptoed to my suitcase and took the packet out from under the pile of underwear. I was relieved to see that it didn’t actually have arms and legs. Just a gold clasp and the words Henry Zipzer written in Ms. Adolf’s handwriting on the front. I tossed the packet on my bed. Well, you have to admit that was a start. It was out. I picked it up. Wow, I had forgotten how heavy it was. I opened the clasp and glanced inside. When I took a serious look at how many sheets of paper were in it, I knew I had to get to work. That thing was going
to take me forever and a day.

At breakfast, I actually tried to talk my dad into letting me stay in and skip the Library of Congress so I could work on my packet.

“Hank, the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world,” he said. “I think you should see it.”

“It has approximately 530 miles of bookshelves,” Emily explained.

Oh no, there she goes again. Miss Fact Head.

“Not to mention 29 million books, 2.7 million recordings, and 12 million photographs,” she added.

Will someone please stop this girl? Her head is going to explode. She is a danger to herself.

Even though my dad said he appreciated my responsible attitude, he insisted that we all go to the Library of Congress together. And who was I to argue with my dad?

I can definitely say this about the Library of Congress. There are a whole lot of books in that place.

My mom wandered around admiring the architecture and ended up in a section about
food and nutrition. My dad headed straight for the dictionary shelves. Emily went with him because, of course, she likes everything my dad likes. Frankie and I didn’t know what else to do, so we trailed after them. My dad looked at medical dictionaries, foreign language dictionaries, slang dictionaries, scientific dictionaries, and even an official rap dictionary. I’ll bet in that hour, he picked up at least a hundred new words for his crossword puzzle competition. He was as happy as a puppy chasing a stick.

“Look, Hank,” he said, practically jumping up and down as he took out a dusty old volume. “A Swedish rhyming dictionary.”

“Wow, Dad. That’s really…uh…who even knew there was one of those?”

“You don’t see a thing like this every day.”

Yeah, thank goodness.

Fortunately, I had a sneezing fit from the dust and I was asked to leave. You know, libraries are very quiet places.

Frankie and I got to wait for the rest of the family on the steps outside. We made up a game to see who could hop on one foot all the way down the steps and back up again. It was way
more fun than sniffing dictionaries.

Next, we went to the Air and Space Museum and had a totally great time. We got to touch a real moon rock and see the Apollo 11 command module. Boy, would I love to be an astronaut, except I hear you have to be good in math, which pretty much cuts me out. Oh well. No moon walk for me. But a guy can dream, can’t he?

In the afternoon, we went to see the Lincoln Memorial, which is this huge white marble statue of Abraham Lincoln sitting in a giant chair. His foot was as big as my whole body. Emily started rattling off Abraham Lincoln facts, like when he was born and how tall he was, and how many children he had, and blah blah blah blah blah.

In the middle of her boring blabbering, my brain suddenly switched into another gear and remembered something I hadn’t thought of in a long, long time. I have never before been able to out-brain Emily, but I swear it happened, right there on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

In second grade, during African-American History Month, we had to memorize the famous
speech that Martin Luther King, Jr. gave in 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial during a civil rights march. Maybe it was because I was standing right there, but somehow, the whole speech came rushing back to me. I opened my mouth, and out it came. I, Hank “I Can’t Remember Anything” Zipzer, stood at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, just where Dr. King had stood, and said in a big voice:

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”

I was so caught up in those words that I didn’t even notice that a few tourists had gathered around and were listening to me. When I stopped speaking, they all applauded. One man called out, “Good for you, son.” My mom was there, too, and had tears in her eyes.

Hank: one. Emily: nothing.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment
and those words and the way my mom hugged me afterward. If you’re ever at the Lincoln Memorial, try it. I promise you will feel really good.

M
AN OH MAN,
was I ever tired that night. We had been on our feet all day long. This road trip business was hard work.

Back at the Comfort-For-U Motel, I flopped down on the bed in our room and yawned.

“No yawning allowed, dude,” Frankie said. “It’s homework time.”

“I know it,” I answered him. The packet was still on the bed where I had left it that morning. “I’m just going to take a five-minute rest before I start.”

Frankie was stretched out on his bed, too. He pulled out his book,
Amazing Sports Facts
, and started to read. He must have been really fried, because within two minutes, he was asleep. I mean gone.

I know I had promised to get started on
my homework packet. And I was about to, but sometimes other things get in the way, and well…

TEN THINGS YOU CAN DO IN A
MOTEL ROOM RATHER THAN
YOUR HOMEWORK

I’
M NOT PROUD OF IT.
But yes, I admit it. I did watch a little TV when we came back from dinner at seven thirty.

Okay, five hours of TV. It could have been six.