Masatomo and I have discussed the subject of skipping classes before...

Some years ago, Masatomo (sort of a professional American graduate student by now) was at college (here in Salem) with some of his Japanese buddies, who were going gah gah over an American girl with long brunette hair on campus. This girl was there to help foreign students learn English as a second language. Masatomo would tease his pals and say "You want me to go ask her to wave at you?" Bet it scared them to death that he might do it too!

He'd never guess that down the road, that another college student (Jeremy) would come up to him in the judo class they shared and say "Would you like to work translating anime? My mother is looking for a backup translator." (Mika was going on vacation for a few weeks.) Masatomo was delighted since he was a big anime fan when he was back in Japan.

Never could he have guessed that, after working with me for a while, that he would find out that the brunette girl that the Japanese boys' eyes were on was Bruce's and my oldest.

Since Tabitha never talked about her unusual situation, he was surprised to find out from me that she had skipped over high school from Jr. High to go straight to college. He told me that students aren't allowed to skip classes at all in Japan.

I made sure he realized it wasn't all that easy here either...not anymore. It took a huge battle against the system to get the inflexible to bend. The end result? She graduated from what is now Western Oregon University; Phi Kappa Phi with honors and was very happy with her choice. Though Tabitha was 2 years older than Rika when she graduated, I can really identify with the story in some respects.

And, back to Masatomo and his Japanese pals, I later found out that he was planning to walk up to Tabitha and quietly tell her that if she would wave at his buddies, he'd pay her! BAKA! Tabitha was stunned when I told her about the Japanese boys. She had no idea what was going on at all. (^_^)!! Mother KD just sits back in hopeless amusement.