Results: Three out of five students refused to go into the classroom on account of they thought there’d be a bucket of water over the door, or something nasty like that, which is understandable because we’ve been known to play practical, and less practical, jokes. Eventually we managed to round up twenty students to go into the room, count the people in the room, then report back to us. Fifteen students said that there were nine people in the room. Four students said there were ten. One student said there were seventeen (we believe he counted the hamsters and guinea pig).

Conclusion: Four out of five people do not see the Schwa in your standard classroom.

I don’t know what it was about the Schwa that kept getting to me. I can’t say I was always thinking about him—I mean, he was hard to think about—that was part of the problem. You start to think about him and pretty soon you find yourself thinking about a video game, or last Christmas, or fourteen thousand other things, and you can’t remember what you were thinking about in the first place. It’s like your brain begins to twist and squirm, directing your mind away from him. Of course that’s nothing new to me—I mean, it seems like my brain is always twitching in unexpected directions, especially when there are girls around. I’ve never been the smoothest guy around girls that I like. I’ll say stupid things, like pointing out they got mud on their shoes or mustard on the tip of their nose, like Mary Ellen MacCaw did once—but with a schnoz like hers, it’s hard not to get condiments on it, and maybe even a condiment bottle lodged up inside there once in a while. My awkwardness with girls did change, though, once I met Lexie. Lots of things changed after I met Lexie—but wait a second, I’m getting way ahead of myself here. What was I talking about? Oh yeah. The Schwa.