My name is Asser, and I’m not a little kid—I’m six years old! I’m a whole year older than my cousin Malika.

Just a little while ago, we hid behind the curtain. Of course, we love disappearing from grown-up eyes.
From our hiding spot, we heard my mother telling my aunt that children in Japan learn how to take apart digital watches and put them back together!

We looked at each other in astonishment.
“Why can’t we see people behind the curtain,” we wondered. “But we can still hear their voices!”

On the other side of our hideout, my aunt laughed and said, “I wish our children could be like the kids in Japan—learning useful things, not just watching cartoons on tablets and phones all day.”
Then both of them burst out  laughing.

We exchanged puzzled glances at what our mothers had said. Then Malika asked me,
“Are kids in Japan different from us? Are they grown-ups?”

I replied, confused, “What do you mean?”

She tried to explain. “Are they like my brother Adam—he goes to university every day and knows everything?”

Trying to understand, I asked, “Does he know about digital watches?”

She answered confidently, “Of course! He has lots of watches.”

I thought for a moment, then said, “Then maybe kids in Japan go to university!”

Malika suggested we ask Adam to take us with him to university tomorrow so we could become like the kids in Japan. But I quickly said, “No! I don’t like university. I only like feeding the cats and teaching the little kitten how to use her special sandbox.”

She replied immediately, “You’re really good at training cats. They obey you in everything—as if you were a wizard!”

I laughed and told her she was good at organizing the house. (I’ve seen you many times putting everything back in its place so easily.)

She gave a shy smile and said, “We’re good at a lot of things.”

Then I told her the amazing idea I just had: “Then maybe…we can teach the kids in Japan how to feed and train cats, and how to put everything back where it belongs—
and they can teach us how to assemble watches!”