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playing “Chase Da Cat” – today of all days?’
    â€˜What’s “ironic”?’ asked Top Dime.
    Arthur’s hand shot up. ‘I know!’ he said. ‘That’s like made of metal. You know – same as Iron Man.’
    Jim marked the register. There were eight boys and seven girls in Special Class Two this year. He never tried to learn their names all at once, but he had to be careful because he tended privately to give them nicknames, like Squinty or Hellboy or Britney or Bart, and last year he had inadvertently come out and called a girl Hooters to her face.
    The class started to grow noisy again. The girls started chattering and several of the boys began to flick paper pellets at each other.
    â€˜Tamara Wei?’ said Jim. A Chinese-American girl put up her hand. She was wearing a dark green silk blouse with a cheongsam-style collar, and her hair was immaculately cut in a shiny black bob.
    â€˜Looking pretty dolled-up for college, Tamara,’ Jim remarked.
    â€˜I want to be an anchorwoman, sir,’ Tamara told him. ‘I auditioned in July for KTLA. They said I have a terrific TV face and a terrific TV voice. All I have to do is learn to read more better.’
    â€˜OK, we’ll see what we can do,’ Jim told her. He stood up, went to the whiteboard behind his desk and wrote the word ‘euphemism’ in large blue letters. ‘Do you want to try reading that for me?’
    Tamara stared at it for a long time, and then slowly shook her head. ‘I don’t know how you would say that. I don’t even know what it means.’
    â€˜It means using an inoffensive word instead of a word that could be rude or upset people. Like calling it an “image enhancement community” instead of a “fat camp.” Or “wind” or “gas” instead of “fart.”’
    The ginger-haired boy let out a whoop and said, ‘I don’t believe it! Did my ears deceive me? My teacher said “fart!”’
    â€˜Oh! I’m sorry!’ said Jim. ‘What do you normally call it?’ Jim waited until the laughter had subsided. Then he said, ‘OK . . . anybody else want to try reading out this word on the board? How about you, Arthur?’
    â€˜Oopahooism? Yoopahooism?’
    â€˜Good try,’ Jim told him, and then told him how to pronounce it properly. ‘There . . . you actually learned something, and it’s only your first class. Think what you’ll know by the end of the year.’
    â€˜Yeah,’ put in the ginger-haired boy. ‘How to talk about poop and stuff like that in polite company, without nobody getting offended.’
    â€˜Well, you’re nearly right,’ Jim told him. ‘The reason we sometimes use euphemisms is to spare people’s feelings. But it’s not just a question of respect. It makes for good communication, too. If you swear a lot, it gets in the way of what you’re trying to say. It devalues your argument. Bad language makes you sound like you’re ignorant, like you only know words beginning with F.’
    â€˜I know a word that don’t begin with an F,’ put in Top Dime. ‘It begin with an M, like in M for mother, but I have to admit that it do have an F in it halfway through.’
    Jim sat down. ‘OK, T.D., very hilarious.’ He ran his pen down the register, and then he said, ‘Last name on the list, then. Kim Dong Wook? Which one of you is Kim Dong Wook?’
    Everybody turned around in their seats, but there was nobody in the classroom who looked as if they might be called Kim Dong Wook.
    â€˜Guess Wooky’s playing hooky,’ suggested the ginger-haired boy. His real name was Teddy Greenspan but Jim had already nicknamed him Splatter because of his freckles. He was tempted to change it to Motormouth.
    Jim marked Kim Dong Wook ‘absent’ and closed the register.
    â€˜Right,