Go, Purotniku-san!

Getting up at 5AM is a very good idea when you're returning to Saint Plotniko from Stiletto City to make it to a Kanji test at 12 noon. Plot and Duck were on the road by 5:45 and home by 11:15. They ate toasted pumpernickel and string cheese and drank hot coffee. Plotnik needed to study, so for a good solid hour, Ducknik quizzed him. Of course, she couldn't read anything but the English words, so Plotnik was forced to break it down for her.

"'Medicine,"' she said.

"OK, 'medicine?' Well, 'medicine' has the radical for 'grass' on top, that's two little vertical lines with a horizontal line going through them. Then, under 'grass,' you do a box with a line through it, that's 'sun,' with two little jabs on the left and two more on the right which makes it look like a lantern, and under the lantern is 'tree,' which looks like the bottom of PD and 5H's coffee table. 'Grass,' 'lantern,' and 'tree.' 'Medicine.' Capisce?"

'But why don't they pronounce each kanji the same way all the time?" she said.

"Because you can't drink a milkshake with a chopstick," Plotnik said.

When they got home to a blustery, beautiful, maybe-rain day, Plotnik immediately loaded the Plotkicycle with three Japanese books, a Japanese-English dictionary and a windbreaker, and took off flying down Chenery to Bosworth to Monterey to Forester to CCSP. He tied up the cycle and ran up the stairs into class just in time for Matsumura Sensei to postpone the test until Wednesday.

"Chokku, kokuban!" she said. To the blackboard. Matsumura Sensei called out words and Plot and his six Level One classmates attempted to draw them. Amazingly, Plotnik got a few right.

'Ii, desu ka, Purotniku-san,' said Matsumura Sensei. 'Good.' She even had Phil-san look at Plotnik's kanji once because Plotnik had gotten it right and Phil had gotten it wrong. This was a first. "Phiru-san," she said. "Look at Purotniku-san's 'medicine.'"

It was the grass, and the lantern, and the tree. Plotnik started to laugh. Once he started, he couldn't stop. "That's right, boys and girls, look at Purotniku-san!" he said, and "Ho ho ho, go Purotniku-san!"

Even the tall, beautiful T.A. smiled. For perhaps fifteen seconds, The Great Plotnik stopped feeling like The Lesser Putznik during Kanji class. Somewhere, pigs are flying.