The story is about a young girl named Sanke who is, if you’ll pardon the pun, a mess. Part of the daily ritual at her school is to make sure that each student is adequately clean. They go down the lineup and read off everyone’s name. Manke, Rafe, and others pass with flying colors. But when it is Sanke’s turn, the response she gets is a solid “neyn!”

Everyone is very perturbed by the fact that Sanke is so dirty. When asked why she did not bathe that morning, she gives nothing but excuses. “Oh,” she says, “I couldn’t get clean because I was too busy.” What could a child possibly be busy with in the morning, you might ask? She was busy defending some freshly made latkes from her mischievous cat, who was trying to eat them. In a last-ditch effort to distract the cat from her very enticing latkes, she took the cat out back and beat it with a stick. It is because of this that she simply did not have enough time to wash up before school.