My wife teaches English at a high school in Japan. Last week, she gave her students a writing prompt: "If you could be American for one day, what would you do?" She read me the answers at dinner. She had to stop three times because she was laughing too hard. "Own a pickup truck. I don't need a truck. I just want to say, 'Don't worry, I'll grab the truck.'" "Have a garage. Not for a car. For 'stuff.'" "Buy 48 rolls of toilet paper at Costco. I live with my parents. I want them anyway." "Get a free refill. Then another one. Then another one. Until they ask me to leave. They won't ask me to leave." "Water my lawn at 6 a.m. in a bathrobe and wave at my neighbor." "Call my teacher 'dude.'" (My wife underlined this one. Twice.) "Hang a flag on my house for no reason. Just because it's Tuesday." And a lot of them wrote some version of this: "Tell my dad I love him. Out loud. At the dinner table." Then she had the class vote for the best answer. The winner wasn't funny. It came from the funniest kid in the class. The truck kid. "Stand up when the anthem plays, put my hand on my heart, and look around and see everybody else doing it too." My wife asked him why he picked that one. He shrugged. "Because then you're never proud alone."