Strawberry Fields Forever – Chapter 8, Act 2, Strip 9

Yeah, that seems like the advisable approach. It’s hard to look smart with a piece of strawberry cake in your hair, so you better make use of any available opportunity to garner smartie-points elsewhere – especially when you can also use that as a distraction from the piece of strawberry cake in your hair*.

Speaking of Gregory being clever, that might also apply to his generic reference to “this country”. It avoids having to be explicit about whether he is, or at least suspects himself to be, in Japan, Canada or the US. Even if a school uniform quota of 60 % would seem to imply Japan, it might as well apply to Canada, as far as anybody knows – since anybody doesn’t know a lot about Canada in general, but requiring school uniforms well sounds like something they might be doing there. It doesn’t sound like something one could say about the US, but that still doesn’t rule out that option – Gregory could simply be an American who is insufficiently informed about his own country. He wouldn’t exactly be the only one…

More on Monday.

* Note: A Strawberry Shortcake ™ hairclip does not count as piece of strawberry cake in your hair for the purposes of these considerations – but wearing one is going to date yourself badly, these days.