I was into in my social studies class at school, which was not my school, but a building looking suspiciously like the mall downtown. I'd been carrying a huge stack of books and papers, including a few novels and my Czech notebook, which I set down on my desk.
Goldstein, my teacher, started the class, saying that to give us some first-hand information on World War II, he had invited Hitler to come talk with us. (Hitler, conveniently enough, was being held in a jail just across the school.)
He left and came back with a smallish, pregnant woman with short brown hair, and introduced her as Adolf Hitler. "Do you have any questions for her?" he asked, adding "But please don't make her angry."
One kid raised his hand and asked what her favorite color was. "Blue," she replied. "Hey, that's mine too!" the kid said.
After a few more of these questions, somebody asked, "Why did you start World War II?"
"Well," she said, "After the first world war, everybody hated the Germans."
I was going to ask how starting a war would improve their popularity, when she walked over to my desk and laid her hand on the stack of paper. "What is your name?" she asked.
I told her.
"And why do you have all this paper?"
"It's my schoolwork, ma'am," I said.
She pulled a few papers out -- notes, assignments. Then she found my Czech notebook, and held it at arms length, as if it were, say, a bag of dog shit. "What is this?"
"That? Oh, it's just my Czech notebook, ma'am."
"Czech is a stupid language," she told me.
I started crying, and Goldstein came over and whacked me on the back with a meter stick.
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