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Maybe you'd like to play with them."
    Sam shivered. He was accustomed to playing by himself at home. He didn't
want
to play with other children. They always grabbed things. And here at nursery school, probably all the children were learning to be nurses, and that meant—oh,
no...
    They would have to practice giving shots. They would want to give shots to
him.
    "NO," he said loudly to his mother. "I AM NOT GOING TO GO NEAR THE OTHER CHILDREN."
    His mom sighed. "Okay," she said.
    Now, as they approached the school, Sam held on very tightly to his airplane book. He could see stuff in the fenced yard. Interesting-looking stuff. A big swing made out of a truck tire. A whole climbing thing painted different colors. A slide shaped like a giraffe. Sam could see that you climbed up the giraffe and slid down its long neck, and that it would probably be a whole lot of fun.
    "I'm not going to do that giraffe slide," Sam said to his mother. "I'm only going to do my airplane book."
    "Okay," said his mom.
    "Even if they
make
me," Sam said. "Even if they tell me I
have
to do the giraffe slide, I'm not going to do it."
    "They won't make you. No one will make you do anything."
    "Even," Sam said, "if they tell me that they'll hold my airplane book very carefully for me while I do the giraffe slide, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to say, 'You can't make me.'"
    His mom lifted him out of the stroller. She folded it into its umbrella shape. "Sam," she said, "I promise you that no one will make you go down that slide."
    "Well," said Sam, looking back at the playground as they went through the door, "I might go down the giraffe slide just one time to be polite."

    "It's better than junior high, and it's better than Harvarduniversity," Sam announced at dinner, "and it's the best school in the whole world, my school is. There is a slide like a giraffe, and there are a million books, and some of them have airplane pictures, and there are paints that you can moosh around, but you have to put on a smock first. And I'm going to have lots of new friends, and one of them is named Adam."
    "That's nice, Sam," said his dad. "Katherine, would you pass the salad?"
    "Adam plays rough," Sam said, "and the teacher has to say 'Time Out, Adam!'"
    "Go ahead and finish the salad, Myron," Mrs. Krupnik said. "Otherwise, I'll just have to throw it away. Eat your veggies, Sam."
    Sam took a bite of string beans. "No uniforms," he announced with his mouth full. "But everybody wears OshKosh, same as me. And there's a dress-up corner," he continued, "with a big box of clothes you can put on. And
hats.
There's a policeman's hat, but if a girl puts it on, then it's a police
woman's
hat, and there's an army helmet, and—"
    "Great, Sam," Anastasia said. "Mom, you know what I did today? I—"
    "And there's a big Mexican hat, called a somberro," Sam went on.
    "
Sombrero,
" his mother corrected.
    "Right. Somberro. That's what I said. And my friend Adam put on the somberro—"
    "
Sombrero,
" his father said.
    "Does anybody want to hear what I did today?" Anastasia asked. "We had an English test, and I—"
    "So my friend Adam put on the somberro," Sam continued, "and he took a block from the block area and pretended the block was a gun, and he was aiming it and shooting it, but the teacher took it away and said 'Time Out, Adam.' So then Adam—"
    "Sam," said his mother. "Eat."
    Sam put a forkful of potato into his mouth. He swallowed it hastily without chewing. "So then Adam took a toy airplane, and he was zooming it around, and he pretended that it was dropping bombs on the cooking corner. That's where the little sink is and the stove, and you can run real water—they let you do that—and you can use an eggbeater in the water and make soapsuds if you want. These other guys, Jeremy and Skipper, they were making soapsuds, and Adam came by and bombed their soapsuds. But the teacher took the airplane away and said to Adam, 'No bombs,' so then