They'll take unskilled volunteers to clean up litter by the side of the road. There are Craigslist ads for short term work. He can find a website entitled didlamigrasaytheyweregoingtocrackdownrecently.com/columbus and it says NO and has the address of a Home Depot.

Oh, yeah, America does have that stupid law. He forgot.

He'll clean up litter for a day or two and see if he makes friends while he's doing it.

There's the guy who mumblesings along to the music in his headphones and a teenager who says she has to pick up community service hours for her high school graduation requirements and a guy who says his therapist told him to try this and the lady who organizes the effort and keeps the nicest trash-grabbing object for herself.

He asks the high schooler about high school on this planet, since he isn't from here and therefore finds it interestingly alien.

"I have to take math and history and English and science and gym and then I get to pick an elective but I don't get to not pick an elective. I picked choir since we can't afford an instrument for me to be in band and I hate how paint smells so I didn't want to do art."

"...What do they teach you in history class?"

"It's American History this year so it's stuff about how the Fractious States were formed and how... cars were invented... I'm getting a C minus right now."

"You know more than me! I hadn't heard of the Fractious States last week."

"I guess we're not a big deal on your planet. Does your planet have high school?"

"Yeah but not when I was growing up, I’m a lot older than most living humans."

"How old are you?"

Thor, unlike the author, knows his age according to the Gregorian calendar to the day. It is very old.

"Wowwwwwwwww. You're not old enough to have seen dinosaurs though. I bet you have seen things but none of them would have been dinosaurs and that's kind of disappointing."

Thor knows but doesn’t care what a scientist who cared more about evolutionary similarity than coolness would say to that.

"I have seen a dragon, though."

GASP

"Wait, dragons aren't real. People used to think dinosaur bones might add up to dragons but it turned out that they don't."

She just contradicted him! Excellent! Important! "I was using the word to describe a kind of alien that's a little bit similar."

"Ooooooooooooooh. Do you have photos?"