Unfit for Education

Unfit for Education
Chapter	4 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	May 12, 2006 (2006-05-12)
Page count	4
Major characters	Yashy, Lucy, Mike, Sue
Minor characters	David, Amaya, Daisy, Paulo
Locations	Roseville Middle School
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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School never ends, Yashy wants an education of her own, and Sue's science fair project asks its volunteers only one thing: don't think of a polar bear. That's harder than it sounds when, like Mike, your head is full of Lucy's pretty blue eyes.

Synopsis

Lucy groans that school is never going to end, prompting Yashy to pop up and ask whether she ought to be in preschool by now. Mike mocks her Yoshi-like looks instead, and the page ends with Yashy flailing and screaming "I AM NOT A YOSHI!!"

When the teacher, a poodle, announces science fair preparation, Yashy asks about preschool programs and gets waved off with a blunt "'Sides, you're just a pet." A devastated Yashy declares she'll sit with her own kind, and folds her arms in solidarity beside the class hamster.

By presentation time, Sue is calling for test subjects. Nearby, David tries to prove his puberty "hypothesis" hands-on and gets smacked by Amaya. Lucy, Mike, Daisy, Paulo and Yashy all sign up for Sue's experiment.

Sue's project is a thought-suppression exercise about obsessive-compulsive disorder: nobody is allowed to think of a polar bear, and anyone who does must say "bear" out loud. Yashy caves within seconds and can't stop chanting.

Mike outlasts everybody, mostly because his mind is elsewhere. He sneaks a glance at Lucy and drifts into an adoring daydream of her eyes, her nose, and her delicate white fur. His imagined Lucy promptly turns into a bear wearing a pink bow, and a defeated ".. bear." slips out of him. Yashy still can't stop chanting after the test ends. One smug remark from Mike about her one-track mind earns him a tackle and a slapping that finally shuts her up.

Mike's daydream runs into some trouble at the word "fur".

Character dynamics

• Mike and Lucy: Nothing actually changes between these two, since Lucy never finds out what Mike spent the experiment thinking about. All the same, this is the first time the comic goes inside Mike's head about her. While everyone else wrestles with polar bears, his thoughts wander straight to Lucy's eyes, nose, and fur. Gaming Rivalry had him swooning over one of her fake-sweet hugs, and this goes a fair bit further.

Trivia & observations

• Veronica drew this chapter while studying for her psychology final, and Sue's polar bear exercise came "more or less like this" from her reading on obsessive-compulsive disorder. She later confirmed the influence on Tumblr, adding that she "wanted to develop the characters into more than just flanderisations, which is how they started".
• This chapter is the first appearance of both Sue and Amaya.
• Per Veronica's commentary, she had trouble deciding the cast's grade when the series began, eventually settling on eighth grade. The same ambiguity caused confusion about Yashy's age, which she resolved with a blunt "SHE'S FOUR."
• David's hypothesis covers "all high schoolers", even though the commentary places the cast in eighth grade. The series later confirms the middle school setting outright in Farewell, Middle School.
• The class hamster packs two pop-culture nods into one exchange. Yashy addresses him as "Hamtaro", and his reply is a near-quote of the Wonder Pets theme song.

Related chapters

• The Burden of Parenthood: The chapter right after this one continues the family joke. Yashy keeps treating Lucy as her mom, and a sex-ed baby project gives her a whole new reason to rage when Daisy gets paired with Mike.
• Prom Preparation: The nearest payoff of Mike's daydream. Yashy attacks girls who flirt with Mike in defense of his crush on Lucy, saying out loud what this chapter only showed inside his head.
• Left Behind: Lucy mentions here that she was nine when she named Yashy. This chapter's flashback shows that era, with young Lucy finding the egg Yashy hatched from.
• Unfulfilled Fantasy: The chapter that introduces Sandy and her history with Mike. At this point in the series there's no Sandy context at all, so the daydream reads as a straightforward crush reveal.