Research once again demands that I take to the road to observe certain people like the animals they are. This time the migratory subjects of my very serious study are roving the Teutonic nations, drinking in a van by day and rocking out by night, if previous research serves. And so I find myself in the aisles of vast chain bookstores, contemplating rows of German phrasebooks. Which one to get? So hard to decide. Luckily they claim to be pocket-sized, and it's quite simple to test this hypothesis and nick the lot. (Wait, that's not German.) In one fell swoop, I strike a blow to bookstore corporatism and take a small step toward global understanding.

I've often wondered what I sound like bumbling along in the languages I kind of know. I kind of know French and I kind of know Spanish, but my verbs are all strangely conjugated and as time goes by, my grasp of all those weird past tenses grows weaker. What is left is my verbose and manic personality, trapped in an eternal present. I have a feeling I sound like this:

"So, yes, we are looking for the restaurant? And we are not finding it, you see? Because maybe it is to the left or maybe to the right, we are looking left, right, but we don't knows. We knows the restaurant is there. I go to it once long time before. So do you know restaurants very well personally? Do you know about this restaurant? I am remembering in my head but, maybe no. Maybe the restaurant is not in my head, or in this streetway, or this village. I don't know but I think maybe yes."

After three years of trying off and on to learn Spanish, the French I kind of used to know is ossifying, and the whole thing is melting into a Romantic confusion. But then it isn't only language that bends toward romantic confusion, but all things, sooner or later.

German would be a completely fresh start. I've heard everyone in Germany speaks English, so I probably won't have to learn it at all. But just in case, I've compiled a list of phrases I think will be particularly useful given the variety of situations I find myself in when traveling. So far I can say banhof (train station), and Achtung, kommt hier der Jude! (Look out, here comes the Jew!). But these other phrases might prove more useful and less culturally insensitive.

I would like a glass (bottle) of red wine, please.

I would like a glass (bottle) of water, please.

I would like an espresso/cup of coffee, please.

Where is the bathroom?

I'm with the band.

Where is the band?

How long have I been unconscious in that corner over there?

I'm married, please don't touch me.

Fuck off.

I like your hat.

Is there tobacco in this?

It's just an iPod! In an ammunition box!

I don't speak German and I have no idea what you're saying to me.

Do you speak English? French? Spanish? Yiddish?

Please do not allow the actions of George Bush or 98% of the people in America to reflect on me in any way. I hate the motherfucker and recognize the United States government as the instrument of global oppression it is. Soon, the mass uprising! But tonight, we drink!

What sort of wurst is that?

What sort of vegan stew is that?

Is this where millions of my distant relatives were tortured and killed or is this where hundreds of thousands of your civilian countrymen were carpet-bombed?

Read any good Nietzsche (Rilke) lately?

Does this beer have a lot of carbs in it?

Help!

Watch out!

Do you have a small receptacle in which I might discreetly vomit?

I'm sure it's just a flesh wound. May I have a small cloth to staunch the bleeding?

Please show me where I can get some coffee, my head is exploding.

I didn't know that was in there and I swear it's not mine.

You guys got any mozzarella panini in this joint?

I have worn this delicate, poorly made garment in the mosh pit and now it is badly torn. Do you have sewing materials I might borrow so I do not expose my naked body to your esteemed nation?

I don't care what you say, I am not climbing that enormous mountain. I've got nothing to prove to anyone, least of all you. All right, make me three ham-and-cheese sandwiches, get the rope and the machete and I'll meet you at dawn.

Your very own SuperLefty will be a special guest in the RATS Reading Series at the Lucky Cat Bar this Saturday night. RATS is some kind of acronym I know not which, but whatever it is I probably disagree with it, as acronyms and institutions tend to go together. But let's not hold that against those other fine words, "lucky," "cat" and "bar." 7:00 p.m. at The Lucky Cat Bar at 245 Grand Street between Driggs and Roebling Avenues in Williamsubrg. L to Bedford. $5 cover (includes free drink).

In what passes for creative work in today's schools, one of my students, an eighth-grader, has to write a children's book explaining nuclear proliferation in North Korea. "It's really depressing," she said, "because it's hard to describe nuclear warheads in a way that's not scary."

This brought back memories of my own wildly inappropriate book reports. In the sixth grade, we had to read a different type of book each month and then do a different kind of project. Read a book about science, perform a science experiment, read a novel, make a diorama, that kind of thing. I've always been terrible at art projects and remember almost erupting in tears while wrestling with a rubber band and some paper clips, trying to suspend a Ken doll I had inadequetely glued to a My Little Pony within a Keds box in a vague representation of one of books in the A Wrinkle in Time triology.

The month we read biographies, the project was a pop-up book. We spent a delightful day in school learning different pop-up techniques, from little doors that slid into pockets to wheels that spun around in little windows to reveal different images to strings you pulled to make things pop up or fall down. We were then instructed to use no less than three different types of pop-ups in our biography pop-up book book reports.

I was a little bit of a go-getter in those days and yet already curious about stories including such grand themes as crime, redemption and a meteoric rise to power. For my biography pop-up book project, I chose The Autobiography of Malcom X.

Rendering the life of Malcom X in pop-up book form might have been daunting for anyone but my eleven-year-old self. I was just a year or two shy of the onslought of hormones that would rob me of my unwavering confidence, a confidence of a purity and certainty I'd never know again without the administration of highly controlled substances. With this prepubescent confidence still propelling me along what I was then certain was a clearly marked path to America's first female Jewish presidency, I set about making a Malcom X pop-up book that would be sure to earn the only form of approval I knew and desired: a neat, red, ballpoint-pen "A+" gently denting my paper near the very, very top.

At that tender age, the idea that a pop-up book might not be the most respectful manner in which to render the many traumatic and violent events in America's foremost Black Nationalist leader's life did not really cross my mind. And so, I began at the beginning. I depicted the violent death of Malcom's father at at the hands of white supremacists, using the string-pulling technique to make a streetcar run over his already lifeless body. Then, I spent a few pages without pop-ups covering Malcom's difficult childhood and adolesence. To show his descent into a life of crime, I used the little wheel-in-the-window device we'd been taught. Each turn of the wheel revealed in the Scotch-tape window a different type of crime Malcom had committed: first gambling, then robbery, then drug dealing, then prostitutes, all rendered inexpertly in colored pencil. I remember debating what color to use to draw a mound of white powder meant to represent drugs. A black outline? White pencil on a dark background? The prostitutes looked pretty good, I thought. Pretty Woman had just come out and I gave them all hot pink tank tops and big black boots.

Next, I moved on to Malcom in jail, a perfect opportunity to use the sliding door. You could lock Malcom in his jail cell and then you could open the door and let him out, a changed man with iconic black-rimmed glasses. Finally, I used the pull-string to make Malcom fall to the ground when he was assassinated.

I have a vague memory of reading this book aloud to the class, many of whom had read about atheletes or pop stars or requisite Great American types. I don't remember their reaction, but I do remember that my efforts were not unrewarded by my teacher, and the Malcom X Pop-Up Book by Little Emily SuperLefty came back with the coveted stamp of approval: an "A+," and the comment, "Very interesting."

Two years later, once banished to the suburbs, I would write a book called "A Real Jew" and read it to my entire eighth-grade class in a not-so-veiled defense of my status as the only Jew in the grade not to be bat mitzvahed. It was a true sign of the times that this book was far more contreversial than the pull-tab assassinations and spinning-wheel crime history of the Malcom X pop-up book. Just as I had hoped, a heated discussion ensued about whether Judaism was a cultural or religious category. I also used "A Real Jew"--which remains my first and only hardcover publication--to openly criticize the meaningless, insane spending on bar mitzvahs that was the order of both the day and the county of Nassau. Through my characters, a curious little sister named Aurora and her wise, thirteen-year-old older sister Borealis, I sent a message of hope to all the secular, cultural Jews whose parents abhorred religion and said things like, "Couldn't you just fucking vomit?" at the mere mention of attending synogague or worse, a catered affair, or still worse, both of these events in rapid succession.

My adventures in writing for children ended shortly after that, almost as soon as they began. Though, had I known that children's books like this existed, I might have continued a little longer on that path. Maybe "Just a Plant," will become a series. I might be somewhat qualified to be a guest author.