Clowns Rule

The guy in front lived in Japan for four years and seems basically fluent. The girl in back is Chinese so she knows all the kanji already. The guy next to her is also Chinese and not only knows the kanji but knows the Japanese pronunciation. His girl friend seems to speak Japanese perfectly. This semester's two Japanese t.a.'s speak almost no English so they talk constantly to these four students in lightning fast Japanese. Or it might be Japanese. It sounds like it might be Japanese.

That leaves Plotnik and the two other American clown guys. Plotnik was in Guatemala for two weeks, so he missed everything in Lessons 16 and 17 except for the test which he unknowingly got back just in time for.

Two weeks of speaking Spanish, a language Plotnik knows well and with which he feels as comfortable as clogs, to return to one day of Japanese and end up once again a knucklehead.

Still, he said to himself, as he piloted the Plotkicycle down Monterey Avenue back to World Headquarters, there is a purpose to all of this.

In this world we're either being tested or patronized. But the older we get, the less we get tested, the fewer chances we take. That's crazy. If we don't stretch, eventually we'll crack.

Back to class! Clowns rule!